• BFA/MFA, New Genres, San Francisco Art Institute

Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance and video artist originally hailing from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her (often precarious) work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation and video. The New York Times (Kevin McGarry) says, "She has a knack for using her body." Bustamante has presented in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites all around the world. She has exhibited, among other locales, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki.

Her current project, under the working title “Personal Protection” is described as time-travel tour of the role of women in combat through wearable sculptures, performances and videos that explore these questions, bringing history into a contemporary context.

“My illustration of women soldiers (fighting as women, not gendered as men) in historical wartime will provide a framework in which to consider our current psychological framing of war,” Bustamante said.

As Artist-in-Residence at the 2012 convention of the American Studies Association (the premiere academic event in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies), Personal Protection will be featured on the cover of event program, a panel will discuss her projects, and she will present her work at a reception in her honor.

In 2001 Bustamante received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and in 2007 named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, as well as a Lambent Fellow. 2010 she was an unlikely contestant on TV network, Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist."