Nao Bustamante

2025 Milestone Grantee

Nao Bustamante is a legendary artist, born in the Central Valley of California, who now resides in Los Angeles. Bustamante’s precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, painting and writing. She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the NY MoMA, Sundance International Film Festival, Outfest International Film Festival, The Park Avenue Armory and El Museo del Barrio. Bustamante has influenced a generation of artists. The late scholar Jose E. Muñoz wrote, “I want to call attention to the ways in which Bustamante's performance practice engages and re-imagines what has been a history of violence, degradation, and compulsory performance. For a female artist of color to engage this field is not only historically loaded, but it is also extremely vulnerable making.”