Nao Bustamante is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, originally from California’s Central Valley, whose expansive practice spans performance, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, painting, and writing. Her work operates across genres, combining rigorous research with deeply emotive approaches to explore histories of violence, embodiment, and representation, particularly as they relate to race, gender, and power. Bustamante’s practice interrogates systems of visibility and marginalization, often reimagining inherited narratives through performative strategies that foreground vulnerability, resistance, and transformation. Her work has been presented internationally at institutions and festivals including the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Sundance International Film Festival, Outfest, the Park Avenue Armory, and El Museo del Barrio. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Anonymous Was a Woman award, fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and Lambent Foundation, and the Chase Legacy Award in Film.