SAN JOSE, CA.-MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana) presents The Chicana/o Biennial, on view through September 22, 2007. Given Over to Want by Nao Bustamante - Given Over to Want is an ongoing conversation within Nao’s larger repertoire of performance works. Sculpting the body with tape, shadow-play and boxed wine all provide material for the exploration between human want, both natural and contrived. The performance deals with the themes of transformation and desire. The image is as primordial as it is hungry and holy, both fully human and fully alien. The performance is approximately 30 minutes in length and there is an installation remnant left in the space.

About Nao Bustamante - Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance and video artist originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation and video. Bustamante has presented in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites. Her work has been exhibited, among other sites at, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship. Currently she is living in Los Angeles and holds the position as Associate Professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

MACLA is pleased to announce its second Chicana/o Biennial -- an exhibition and public forum conceived to take inventory of and invite reflection every two years on the continuously emergent energy, critical edge, and aesthetic interventions within contemporary Chicano art.

Over the last thirty-five years the field of Chicana/o art and scholarship has developed and expanded exponentially. As an art movement that developed alongside the Chicano civil rights struggles of 1960s and 1970s, Chicano art emerged in direct correlation to social change. Today, there are more points of view and subsequent artists contributing to this important movement of contemporary art, some of which are re-defining what it means to create “Chicana/o art” at this moment in time.

MACLA is looking to challenge the questions and concerns that are currently being brought forth in the contemporary art world. As such, this year’s biennial takes a thematic approach to by asking the following questions: 1) What are the pressing concerns at this moment in time? (politics) 2) What does Chicana/o art look like today? (aesthetics) 3) How do artists engage the community? (activism & organizing).

Participating Artists: Nao Bustamante, Cristina Cantu Diaz, Martin Charlot, emael, Roberto Delgado, Quintin Gonzalez, Jaime Guerrero, Ester Hernandez, Jos� Liz�rraga, Annie Lopez, Gustavo Martinez, Jetro Martinez, Joaquin Alejandro Newman, Alejandro Oliva, Viviana (Viva) Paredes, Lydia Sanchez, Anna Salinas, Santos Shelton, Daniela Steinsapir, Rene Trujillo, Paul Valadez, Rosa Valdez, and Deborah Kuetzpalin Vasquez.

Jurors: Isis Rodriguez, artist, Eugene Rodriguez, artist and professor of Art at De Anza Community College, Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez, MACLA’s Associate Director & Curator.