ARTISTS TO KNOW: NATALIE BUI
NATALIE BUI
Natalie Bui is an illustrator currently based in Los Angeles, California and co-founder of a racial and gender equity consulting business called SHIFT. Natalie’s work centers on self empowerment, community empowerment, and cultural exploration with a visionary approach that emphasizes our collective liberation across communities. She describes her art as “political” and a tool for challenging the way our broken systems currently operate.
SHEER: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
NATALIE BUI: Hi! My is Natalie, pronouns she/her/hers. I was raised in San Jose, California and currently based in Los Angeles! I'm an illustrator and also own a racial and gender equity consulting business. More importantly - I'm a daughter, sister, friend, partner, and new pitbull momma!
SHEER: What are the main themes and subjects of your work?
NB: All my work is political. My work has been a tool of self empowerment, community empowerment, cultural exploration and has now grown into practices of radical accountability and love, solidarity, and collective liberation. I started illustrating to center Asian American voices in politicized manners. However, I'm more interested now in drawing what our collective liberation will look like.
SHEER: How do you view art as a form of resistance?
NB: I view art as a tool to engage, activate, and inform the community in the masses - and challenges folks to think critically on how our systems work. If our history books, our current educational system, and current society won't reckon with our country's truths, I trust that artists will push that learning forward. I believe artists are in the business to abolish - not simply reform, and have a part in playing with the radical re-imagining that our justice system needs.
SHEER: What drew you to illustration as a choice of expression?
NB: Illustration was a way that I could help easily engage folks in the social media age! Procreate and the iPad have really revolutionized the ways illustrators can work. I'm self taught - and I only started a couple of years ago. It truly has democratized who has access to certain tools and how they can get into the illustration world.
SHEER: What inspired you to launch SHIFT Consulting LLC and what was that process like?
NB: We were tired of the ways that diversity, equity and inclusion, and sexual harassment prevention work was traditionally done. They were so corporate, not engaging, and completely outdated - and usually run by older white men. We wanted to flip the script, and carry conversations with people in the ways we were critically thinking about them with our friends, and more importantly - we wanted to see this work led by and created by the folks that were impacted the most.
SHEER: In what ways do you believe your artwork and role at SHIFT overlap?
NB: I believe they share the same message, but in different means. SHIFT allows me to engage in dialogue, in discussion, and in more in depth ways. Though illustrations are so important to my work and what I do, I recognize how fleeting they can be. Illustrations often can capitalize on a moment, an incident - so how do we ensure we create imagery and art work that can sustain itself in its messaging and is not measured just in the likes of Instagram? SHIFT provides a medium that people are hungry for at this time: people want to process.
SHEER: What advice would you share with artists of color to keep us grounded throughout the creative process?
NB: Rest. Follow @thenapministry for it has radically challenged the way I want to work and live. I believe my most creative aspects of my work come from moments of being rested, of not subscribing to hustle culture, of challenging the capitalist machine that exists in all of us to create, create, and create. I trust the process, the relationships I build more than the final outcome itself. Allow yourself time, to reflect on how we can go deeper, be more radical, be more inclusive, and be more thoughtful. Don't rush things and do quick jobs.
SHEER: What message do you hope people take away from your work?
NB: I hope folks can see a world that we deserve. I hope that folks recognize that justice is love for ourselves, for each other, and for our collective.