Nao Bustamante

Nao Bustamante (born September 3, 1969) is a Chicana interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator from the San Joaquin Valley in California.

Her artistic practice encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation, and video and explores issues of ethnicity, class, gender, performativity, and the body.

She is a recipient of the 2023 Rome Prize.

Bustamante was born in California.

She first trained in postmodern dance before moving into the realm of performance in the mid-1980s.

Active in the San Francisco between 1984-2001, Bustamante was once referred to as "the doyenne of the Bay Area’s underground cultural scene."

She holds a BFA and MFA from the New Genres Program at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Bustamante has performed in galleries, museums, universities, and underground sites internationally, notably collaborating with performing artist Coco Fusco and the experimental arts entity Osseus Labyrint.

She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Lambent Fellowship, Chase Legacy Award in Film, Artist in Residence for the American Studies Association, CMAS-Benson Latin American Collection Research Fellowship, Queer Artist in Residence at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) Scholar in Residence Fellowship in preparation for a solo exhibition at Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles.

She currently serves as Professor and Director of MFA Art Program at the University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

She previously held the position of Associate Professor of New Media and Live Art at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Bustamante competed in the first season of Bravo's Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.