Nao Bustamante Featured in Hyperallergic

Artist and Roski Professor Nao Bustamante is featured in “Hyperallergic” in the story “Nao Bustamante Redesigns a Common Gynecological Tool.” In the article, Lauren Moya Ford, writes about Bustamante’s exhibition “BLOOM” on view at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas through September 5.

Los Angeles artist Nao Bustamante’s latest project BLOOM at Artpace in San Antonio was inspired by an uncomfortable visit to the gynecologist in 2011. “I left thinking, ‘Gosh, they can send a man to the moon, but they can’t devise a comfortable speculum,’” the artist wrote in a recent email to Hyperallergic. The speculum is a duck bill-shaped plastic or metal tool used by gynecologists to open the walls of the vagina for pelvic exams and medical procedures. Over the past decade, Bustamante has been thinking of ways to make the tool less unpleasant for the millions of patients who encounter it each year.

Moya Ford concludes with:

This fall, her work will move beyond the gallery, thanks to a University of Southern California Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Research and Creative Grant. The support will allow Bustamante to partner with patent drawers, 3D print technology specialists, and material scientists to develop a prototype that the artist hopes will be ready by 2022. And maybe, someday in the future, her speculum will be the one clients prefer.

Read the full article here.