ABOUT: Natalia Nakazawa
Natalia Nakazawa is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist and educator working in painting, textiles and social practice. A child of Latin American (Uruguayan) and Asian (Japanese American, yonsei, 4th generation) diasporas, her work is deeply in touch with multi-generational cultural legacies. Natalia’s community-driven projects explore ideas of transnationality, cultural identities, storytelling, archives, and patterns of migration. Blurring the boundaries between education, activism, and art making, each of her projects is based in collaborative processes, inviting participation and collective imagining. In her jacquard textiles series, the artist pulls images from the online open access collections with a focus on objects that embody historical moments of cultural exchange. Nakazawa’s work encourages critical engagement with personal histories, utilizing the familiar, warm format of the tapestry as a means of creating objects that can be simultaneously comforting and disruptive.
Natalia received her MFA in studio practice from California College of the Arts, a MSEd from Queens College, and a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has recently been exhibited at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), Arlington Arts Center (Washington, DC), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), The Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Lafayette College Galleries (Easton, PA), and The Old Stone House in Brooklyn (NY). Natalia has been an artist in residence at The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, MASS MoCA, SPACE on Ryder, Wassaic Project, Facebook AIR, Interlude Artist Residency, CAMPO Garzon, Triangle Arts Association, and Wave Hill Winter Workspace.