OPENING CEREMONY

NAO BUSTAMANTE

GRAVE GALLERY

at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Sunday, February 19th from 2-4pm

Photo: Sabena Frink

On Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023, the Studio of Nao Bustamante, in association with Track 16 Gallery, will open a new project in the form of a 3’ x 7’ gravesite gallery at the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

In the spirit of Bustamante’s personal practice, the outdoor Grave Gallery – located just steps from the final resting places of Ed Moses, Judy Garland, and Holly Woodlawn – will embrace a full variety of mediums and feature artists from all walks of life… and afterlife. Located on the artist’s recently acquired burial plot, the idea for the new space surfaced organically over the past couple of years as Bustamante considered a work that could help her face her fears of death. 

“In the spirit of working collaboratively, I realized that one part of the difficulty I have in facing the inevitable ‘final curtain’ is that it is a characteristically solo exit,” said Bustamante. “My life and work has been about conversation and community building. The idea of making a gallery that can showcase the works of creatives I admire, and to enter into a (pre-mortem) dialogue with them via my own gravesite, seemed an obvious choice. With a 28 year history of mounting often aberrant exhibitions with Track 16, gallery director Sean Meredith is the perfect mentor for my burgeoning gallery project.”

Mortality is not a new theme for the artist, who is celebrated for her maximalist approach. In past works, she has staged her own “living” post-mortem photograph (Deathbed, 2010); been the subject of a death portrait on the Bravo reality television program “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” (2010); channeled the famously dead spirits of underground filmmaker Jack Smith and his muse, 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez (Silver and Gold, 2010); immortalized women who fought in the Mexican Revolution (Soldadera, 2015); and embodied an epic death scene (The Wooden People, 2021).

Most recently, in Fall 2022, she conducted a seance: working with an ensemble of artists and actors to confront the spirit of Dr. J. Marion Sims, who built his reputation as the “Father of Gynecology” on the bodies of enslaved women. This took place at New York’s Park Avenue Armory as part of BLOOM, an ongoing series of works in which Bustamante seeks to redesign Sims’ invention—the duck-billed speculum—and create both a realized tool, as well as a body of work that redirects the medical industry’s relationship to the pelvic examination. 

Opening in the midst of Los Angeles art fair week, on Feb. 19, Grave Gallery will launch with the exhibition, Odd Fellows, a two-person show by artist Karen Lofgren and Bustamante herself. The exhibition will include a new sculpture from Lofgren, featuring the gold-leafed impression of knees knelt in submission or prayer, and serving as an elegant tombstone of sorts. Bustamante will further activate the space with a 1900s-era ritual prop and costume from the legendary Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge, pairing the two artists in ritual and fraternal order beyond the earthly plane.

From 2 to 4 p.m., the artists will celebrate the cycles of life and death – and the opening and entombment of Grave Gallery – with a ribbon-cutting, sculpture activation, and champagne reception/eulogy. Scholar, critic, and independent curator Jennifer Doyle will also give a gallery walk-through.

Grave Gallery is located at 6000 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90038.

Please follow @gravegalleryLA on Instagram.

This project was made possible through the Fellowship for Visual Artists. 

IN THE NEWS

HYPERALLERGIC

GRAVE GALLERY

NAO BUSTAMANTE

BY MATT STROMBERG

February 22, 2023

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THE ART NEWSPAPER

GRAVE GALLERY

NAO BUSTAMANTE

BY SCARLET CHENG

February 18, 2023

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GRAVE GALLERY

NAO BUSTAMANTE

February 19, 2023

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Nao Bustamante is a legendary Chicanx 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 BarrioMuseum of Contemporary Art, First International Performance Biennial, Deformes in Santiago, Chile and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She was also an unlikely contestant on 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 VR film, “The Wooden People,” received a producing grant from the Mike Kelley Foundation, and the National Performance Network and was 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. 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. To view her past work, see naobustamante.com. For current activities, visit instagram.com/naobustamante.

Karen Lofgren is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in sculpture and artist books from a feminist and decolonial perspective, and holds an MFA from CalArts. Her research centers on ritual, history, mythology, and the construction of consciousness over time, forming relationships between cultural systems and other wild systems. She is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow; a 2022/23 Canada Council Grantee; 2019 Pollock-Krasner grantee; and was Fulbright Core Scholar at University of the Arts London, Central St. Martins College in 2017/2018.

Solo exhibitions include What is To Cure at Royale Projects Contemporary Art, Trajectory Object c. 2000-2050 with High Desert Test Sites, as well as solo shows at LACE, Pitzer Art Galleries, and Machine Project. Group exhibitions include Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz,Palm Springs Art Museum, Commonwealth & Council, MASS Gallery, LACMA, Human Resources, Bank of America, Carter & Citizen, Royal College of Art, Bozo Mag, Nicodim Gallery, and OCAD University. Projects have also received support from Mike Kelley Foundation, Durfee Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Ranch Projects, and West of Rome Public Art. For more information, visit karenlofgren.net.

Jennifer Doyle is a queer theorist, art critic and sports writer. A Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, she is the author of Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (2013) and Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (2007). She is the author of Campus Sex/Campus Security (2015) and co-editor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996). She guest-curated Nao Bustamante: Soldadera (2015) for the Vincent Price Art Museum, and worked closely with the artist in developing that project (which makes extensive use of archives housed at UC Riverside). She guest curated The Tip of Her Tongue, a seven-performance series for The Broad Museum (2015-2017), and I Feel Different, a group exhibition for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) (2010). In 2018, she curated Ron Athey’s Gifts of the Spirit, working with producing partners Volume and The Broad, and co-curated Aqui No Hay Virgenes: Latina Lesbian Visibility for the Advocate Gallery and LACE (2007). She is a member of the Board of Directors at Human Resources Los Angeles, and is an active member of that organization’s curatorial team.  She is the 2013-2014 Distinguished Fulbright Professor at the University of the Arts, London, and is a recipient of an Arts Writers Grant.

Nao Bustamante, Deathbed, photo 30” x  20”, 2010, photo by Eden Batki.