Naomi Natale

Naomi Natale | One Million Bones

Naomi Natale is an installation artist, photographer, and social activist. She is most interested in using art to bring about and inspire social change. She accomplishes this by creating and directing large-scale art installations that engage hundreds and thousands of artists, activists and children to act on behalf of a social cause. Naomi believes that by inspiring action through art, you can change the world one person at a time.

She is the founder and director of The Cradle Project, a fundraising art installation designed to call attention to the plight of the estimated 48 million children orphaned by disease and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the symbolism of empty cradles to represent the lost potential of these orphans, The Cradle Project was designed to provoke art into action. Over 550 cradles were created –using solely scrap, discarded and recycled materials¬– and donated by artists from around the world who were drawn to the project’s vision. www.thecradleproject.org

Currently, Naomi is the founder and director of a new project titled, One Million Bones, a fundraising art installation designed to recognize the millions of victims killed or displaced by present genocides. www.onemillionbones.org

Naomi has received numerous awards, including the prestigious TED Global Fellowship and the Professional Achievement Award from the School of Arts and Humanities at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, both in 2009 and is currently a TED Senior Fellow and Carl Wilkens Fellow. She has also been an artist in residence at Columbia College of Chicago in 2008 and 2010. In 2003, she graduated from Richard Stockton College of New Jersey with a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art.