Nao Bustamante 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.
Early life and education
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.
1992 Indig/urrito: Performance commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Conquest of the Americas during which Bustamante "challenged the white men in the audience to go onstage to express their apologies for the years of oppression of indigenous peoples by eating a piece of a burrito that Bustamante had strapped on to her hips."
1992: Rosa Does Joan In arguably her most widely seen 'performance,' Nao created the character of "Rosa" the exhibitionist, to appear on the Joan Rivers Show. In this performance, Bustamante "becomes Rosa, a character or persona she devises for the purpose of guerrilla-style stunt performance." As Rosa, she tells Rivers about her sexual exploits while a psychiatrist, , determines how authentic she is as an exhibitionist.
1996-1998: STUFF! with Coco Fusco: Performance which explores sexual and spiritualtourism and its impact on Latin women, based on interviews with Cuban sex workers and child street vendors in Chiapas, Mexico.
1995: America the Beautiful: Extended reflection on the social forces that confine and contain feminine creativity, using her own body as a canvas.
1998: The Chain South: This was a satire piece focused on the corporate and pop-cultural relations between Mexico and the U.S. Bustamante portrays "Ronaldo McDonaldo." Director Miguel Calderon appears in the piece.
2001: Sparkler: This performance includes Nao posing vulnerably with a sparkler behind her in low light.
2003: Neopolitan: Video installation that includes a loop tape of the artist breaking out into spontaneous sobbing. The TV playing the loop is covered by a multicolored cozy that was crocheted by the artist, among other crocheted items. The installation, according to cultural critic José Esteban Muñoz, is "an illustration of the depressive position and its connection to minoritarian aesthetic and political practice."
2006 - 2007: Hero: Multimedia feature-length performance using video. Bustamanate transforms from princess to hag in the course of performance, incorporating video and storytelling.
2007: Wow and Now: A Celebration of Feminist and Queer Performance. Curated by Nao Bustamente, Karen Finley, and Jose Estaban Munoz, November 10 2007 Joe's Pub, New York City.
2009: "Given Over to Want"
2010 Silver and Gold: performance at The Sundance Film Festival that began with Bustamante dressed in a beekeepers outfit frolicking through a green forest. The film then progresses, and "things start to happen that can't be described in a family newspaper." According to Bustamante the film was a homage to "Maria Montez, the 1940s Dominican film star, and muse and legendary filmmaker, Jack Smith."
2013 Tableau: Short fictional film about an experimental filmmaker, JT, as he attempts to complete his apocalyptic film while being interrupted by his tween neighbor. The film premiered at Outfest LA Film Festival. The film can be viewed online.
2015 Soldadera: Exhibition at the Vincent Price Art Museum. Features a documentary film of Bustamante's journey to Guadalaraja to meet 127-year old SoldaderaLeandra Becerra Lumbreras, at the time the last survivor of the Mexican revolution. Bustamante also produced a bullet-proof dress titled "Tierra y Libertad - Kevlar 2945" and rebozo inspired by an image of a group of armed women dressed in Edwardian gowns. The dress is worn in a performance captured in the video "Test Shoot" where Bustamante wears the dress as she is fired at with a rifle.
