Exhibition - Nao Bustamante: Bloom

Fresh off her fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Nao Bustamante returns to Los Angeles with her wide-ranging project, BLOOM.

“After so many months away, I am excited to return home and debut these works in Los Angeles, speckled with new influences from my time in Rome,” said Bustamante.

Bustamante presents a new vision of the vaginal imaginary in the fourth iteration of her project BLOOM, a cross-disciplinary investigation into the history of the pelvic examination and documenting the artist’s own efforts to create the most significant redesign of the vaginal speculum since 1943.  Though difficult in subject matter, this exhibition is approached with Bustamante’s signature humor, so audiences need not be afraid! Rooted in both research and object-making, the idea for BLOOM came into her mind, fully formed, shortly after a pelvic exam in 2011.

“Like many women, I wondered why the medical industry cannot create a more comfortable apparatus for such a basic procedure,” Bustamante explains. “Though the work derives from my own experience, the themes are universal and common.”

Presented for the first time in Los Angeles, the exhibition is an invitation to think about ways to make the tool less unpleasant for the millions of patients who encounter it each year. Supported by a COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellowship, an Artpace Residency (San Antonio, Texas), and a USC Arts and Humanities award, BLOOM’s approach is both practical and fantastical, investigating imagination, material, and space. Probing the monstrous history that led to this apparatus and taking a stern look at the history of pelvic examination, the work takes on particular resonance with the political attacks on women’s health.

Running through Dec. 7, BLOOM will be presented as part of the Participating Gallery Program for Getty’s PST Art: Art & Science Collide, joining in a dynamic exploration of the intersection of art and science this fall.

Guests will enter the exhibition through rich velvet, evocative of a vagina, becoming enveloped in the world of BLOOM. Here, Bustamante will introduce two new oil paintings produced during her residency in Rome. Inspired and blessed by a miraculous visit to the tomb of Raphael, the works mark Bustamante’s early foray into the ancient medium. Once inside, visitors will encounter an antique genealogical examination table levitating in mid-air, balanced, and waiting for activation. The table pays tribute to the enslaved women that physician James Marion Sims used for early gynecological experiments in the mid 1800’s. It’s from these experiments that the deeply uncomfortable duck-billed speculum, commonly used to this day, was born. Deeper into BLOOM, guests will experience works in a variety of mediums, including video, drawing, objects, ceramics, and more. (A full list of works will be available upon request.)

An experience of women’s healthcare through time - exploring the horrors of the past, the struggles of the present, and possibilities for the future, in a fragmented yet impressionistic way - BLOOM is set to culminate later this year. After multiple iterations and evolutions, Bustamante’s speculum prototype is seeking a collaboration partner to bring it to examinees worldwide.

Nao Bustamante (b. 1963) is an artist, residing in Los Angeles, California. Bustamante's precarious work encompasses performance art, video installation, filmmaking, sculpture, and writing. The New York Times 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 New York Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Sundance International Film Festival/New Frontier, Outfest International Film Festival, El Museo del Barrio Museum of Contemporary Art, First International Performance Biennial, Deformes in Santiago, Chile and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She was also an unlikely contestant on the TV network, Bravo's "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist." In 2001 she received the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and in 2007 named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, as well as a Lambent Fellow. In 2008 She received the Chase Legacy award in Film (In conjunction with Kodak and HBO). And was the Artist in Residence of the American Studies Association in 2012. In 2013, Bustamante was awarded the (Short-term) CMAS-Benson Latin American Collection Research Fellowship and also a Makers Muse Award from the Kindle Foundation. In 2014/15 Bustamante was Artist in Residence at UC Riverside and in 2015 she was a UC MEXUS Scholar in Residence in preparation for a solo exhibit at Vincent Price Art Museum in Los Angeles. In 2020 Bustamante’s forthcoming VR film, “The Wooden People” received a producing grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation, and the National Performance Network and will be presented at REDCAT in 2021. 2021 also brought her success with her new research project, “BLOOM,” in which she is determined to redesign the speculum and take a stern look at the history of the pelvic examination. “BLOOM” has been supported by COLA (City of Los Angeles) fellowship, an Artpace Residency, and a USC Arts and Humanities award.

Bustamante is an alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2020 she was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from her alma mater, SFAI. She also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Currently she holds the position of Professor of Art at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.