"Indigurrito" is Nao Bustamante's contribution to the many performances that commemorated the 500 anniversary of the conquest of America. The title mixes the term "indigenous" with "burrito," the name of the famous Mexican wrap. In the performance, 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. With humor and sarcasm, Bustamante addressed the issues that the 500-year commemoration brought to collective attention. Her piece also denounces how art institutions forced artists to pay tribute to the date if they wanted to get funding.

Interview with Nao Bustamante conducted by José Muñoz during the 3rd Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in July of 2002 in Lima, Peru under the title "Globalization, Migration and the Public Sphere." Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance art pioneer originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her work encompasses performance art, installation, video, pop music and experimental rips in time. Using the body as a source of image, narrative and emotion, her performances communicate on the level of subconscious language, taking the spectator on a bizarre journey, with haunting images, cracking stereotypes by embodying them. Bustamante's work has been presented, among other sites at, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She has performed in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Her collaborations include working with such luminaries as Coco Fusco and Osseus Labrint. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship. Currently she is living in Troy, New York and an assistant professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Nao Bustamante's "Lifestyle" is shaped by the architecture of fantasy. Filled with an understated fetish for the purity of surface, "Lifestyle" subtly shifts the power between the three characters until the viewer is unsure of who is in charge in this superficial, yet fulfilling landscape.

Video documentation of Nao Bustamante's solo performance "America the Beautiful" presented as part of the 3rd Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in July of 2002 in Lima, Peru under the title "Globalization, Migration and the Public Sphere." "America the Beautiful" is a body-narrative, which begins with the performer literally setting the stage. Through the rituals of feminine transformation, using clear packing tape and haphazard make-up, Bustamante creates a distorted reality of beauty with all of its eros and defeat. This tragic/comedy takes the viewer on a bizarre circus-like adventure of ladder climbing and breath-holding tension. Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance art pioneer originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her work encompasses performance art, installation, video, pop music and experimental rips in time. Using the body as a source of image, narrative and emotion, her performances communicate on the level of subconscious language taking the spectator on a bizarre journey, with haunting images, cracking stereotypes by embodying them. Bustamante's work has been presented, among other sites at, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She has performed in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Her collaborations include working with such luminaries as Coco Fusco and Osseus Labrint. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship. Currently she is living in Troy, New York and an assistant professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Video documentation of Nao Bustamante's solo performance "Sans Gravity," presented as a part of the 4th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in July of 2003 in New York City, United States under the title "Spectacles of Religiosities." Water can symbolize many things, but often it is associated with knowledge and emotion; both of which are difficult to define in logical terms. In the installation/performance space of "Sans Gravity," Bustamante explores the metaphors associated with water in the physical realm by burdening her body. The weight and the movement of the water develop into extensions of the gesture and another layer of the distorted self. The audience becomes a mechanism of relief. Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance art pioneer originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her work encompasses performance art, installation, video, pop music and experimental rips in time. Using the body as a source of image, narrative and emotion, her performances communicate on the level of subconscious language taking the spectator on a bizarre journey, with haunting images, cracking stereotypes by embodying them. Bustamante's work has been presented, among other sites at, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She has performed in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. Her collaborations include working with such luminaries as Coco Fusco and Osseus Labrint. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship. Currently she is living in Troy, New York and an assistant professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

"Sans Gravity" is a performance/action in which Nao Bustamante introduces her head into a plastic bag filled with water and then tapes it tightly onto her neck. She then sits down upright with the bag on her head. The action creates a real and urgent situation that the artist has to respond to. It ends when Nao, after a minute and twenty seconds, gets free from the water- bag finally breathing like a fish out of water.

Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance artist born in California. Her work encompasses performance art, installation, video, pop music and experimental rips in time. She has performed in galleries, museums, universities and underground sites throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. She is currently teaching New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York. "Sparkler" is a compressed moment, an image that speaks of vulnerability, shame and pride rolled into one. The celebration of a woman, prone.

Nao Bustamante's "The Chain South" is a satire on the corporate and pop-cultural relations between Mexico and the U.S. In this short film, Nao played vagabond Ronaldo McDonaldo. Nao and director Miguel Calderon traveled south from San Francisco across the Mexican border, stopping along the way at McDonald's.