Naomi Natale
ALBUQUERQUE 2025 - 2026
Naomi Natale is an Albuquerque-based interdisciplinary artist whose socially engaged practice centers on collective memory, grief, and the responsibility of belonging. With over 18 years of experience, her work operates at the intersection of social and environmental justice, community collaboration, and large-scale installation. Natale’s projects invite deep reflection on how we come together—in times of crisis, mourning, and longing—and how art can serve as both witness and catalyst. Natale is the founding artist of One Million Bones, a global art installation that mobilized over 150,000 participants from 50 states and 30 countries to handcraft more than one million bones. The project culminated in an installation of 1,018,260 bones on the National Mall in 2013, raising awareness about mass atrocities in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, and Syria. Her current work, Of Grief & Dreams, is a socially engaged installation exploring grief as both personal and communal terrain, centered around a large-scale, interactive ship constructed in the desert. She is a recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s Artist as Activist Fellowship, a TED Senior Fellowship, and the Arts and Healing Network Award.
COMMUNITY PROJECT
Of Grief & Dreams is a socially engaged artwork that creates space for both individual and communal healing. At its heart is the construction of a ship-inspired vessel on Albuquerque Open Space land – a vessel not for oceans, but for navigating inner landscapes of loss, longing, and dreams.
The sculpture will function as an outdoor classroom, sanctuary, and Site of Solace. Once complete, participants will board the ship to take part in solitary reflection or guided communal experiences, including rituals of mourning and celebration, storytelling, and intergenerational workshops. Activities are designed for people of all ages and backgrounds, including families, classrooms, artists and non-artists alike. From these experiences, participants’ dreams will be uncovered, shared, and recorded. An online archive will extend the project beyond the site, building a living repository of memory, resilience, and radical hope.
Community collaboration is central. Albuquerque’s immigrant-rights organization El Centro de Igualdad y Derechos is a key partner, helping the project reach communities whose experiences of loss and resilience are often overlooked. Intergenerational programming will connect students with elders, creating opportunities to explore ancestral dreams and inherited grief. Keshet Center for the Arts serves as a critical strategic partner, helping advance the project’s development and long-term vision through creative collaboration, production support, and community engagement.
Keshet Center for the Arts is also acting as a home venue for Songs That Save Our Lives, a collaborative project Naomi is working on that asks–and answers–the question: How does art save lives? Through an open call inviting responses to “What is a song that saved your life?” participants share a song and the story behind it–how it carried them through grief, memory, or transformation. These stories come alive in a series of three live events in 2026, where the local band METAMORFOS performs the chosen songs as storytellers and guest artists share their reflections. Each event will be recorded and preserved in an online library with playlists of both the original songs and live performances, forming a growing public archive of music, memory, and resilience.
COMMUNITY PARTNERs
Keshet Center for the Arts’ mission is rooted in dance, mentorship, and a welcoming space for the arts. Keshet activates community and fosters unlimited possibilities through education, engagement, innovation, and the pursuit of justice.
Housed at the Keshet Center for the Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and founded in 1996, the heart of our organization is Keshet Dance Company, a core group of professional dance artists, who creatively feed and are fed by by three intersecting program areas: Education and Engagement, encompassing classes and performances for all ages and abilities, the Ideas and Innovation Community, a business resource center and residency-based makerspace for arts entrepreneurs, and Arts and Justice Initiatives, including dance programming within juvenile prisons, field-wide data & research collaborations, systems-change policy advocacy, and community connectivity.
El CENTRO de Igualdad y Derechos is a grassroots, immigrants’ rights and workers’ justice organization based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, We utilize multiple strategies to impact systemic change and grow the power of immigrant families and low-wage workers: grassroots organizing, information campaigns, leadership development, policy advocacy, voter engagement, and strategic communications to impact the issue environment. El CENTRO is unique in that our staff is predominantly comprised of immigrant leaders who are impacted by the same policies, conditions, and racial, social, and economic inequities that we organize our members to address.