Nao Bustamante

Nao Bustamante is a Chicana multimedia and performance artist.

Quotes

• I’m really interested in reality TV as a format for storytelling, as a way of communicating humanity, of seeing ourselves, of seeing our scripted selves perform as ourselves. It’s simulacral, this removal of the self while performing the self in a quote-unquote real life situation…
  • On her appearance on Bravo’s television show Work of Art in “INSIDE THE ARTIST’S STUDIO: NAO BUSTAMANTE” in Interview Magazine (2010 Jun 11)

• …art infuses TV every day. Art produces culture, and hopefully new cultural ideas get expressed in the art world. I think you can see the influence of the art world everywhere on TV.
  • On the limitations of Work of Art in “The Business of Art: An Interview with Nao Bustamante by Brian Sloan” in NYFA Current (2010)

• …They were cooks, they were laborers, they were fighters, they maintained supply lines. It’s interesting to me how women get involved in a conflict, and this was a terrible conflict. So I wanted to make dresses that would protect these women metaphorically.
  • On organizing an art show that highlighted the importance of women during the Mexican Revolution in “Femininity in Kevlar: Nao Bustamante’s women of the Mexican Revolution” in Los Angeles Times (2015 May 14)

• Every Mexican family has a member that fought in the Revolution…There are stories in my family of two great uncles who fought on different sides and they would meet at my uncle’s land to share a meal and then they’d go back to the fight…The Revolution…it divided families.
  • On the familial toll of the Mexican Revolution in “Femininity in Kevlar: Nao Bustamante’s women of the Mexican Revolution” in Los Angeles Times (2015 May 14)