Nala C. Turner

Nala C. Turner  (b. Saint Louis, MO) is a Brooklyn-based visual artist, working across multiple disciplines of art-making and healing such as ceramics, sculpture, somatics, and art therapy.  Her work addresses themes related to race-issues, cultural identity, femininity, social stereotypes, and popular culture perspectives.

Her work is about perception and time. Specifically how the individual and collective are perceived both within the bounds of culture, and the boundlessness of history. Often pulling from her own experiences and rooted in realities kindred to Black people, Turner’s work often seeks out and utilizes history, rituals, and identities recognizable within Black culture to investigate culturally restricting barriers and transubstantiate the representation of Black people within popular culture. Turner uses her work as a space to question social practices of representation and the frequent racial stereotypes it perpetuates. Through clay-work, she looks to reauthor historical narrative, self-perception, and cultural understanding.

Turner’s most recent work, Healing Landscapes (2024), is an interactive, public art diptych created as part of the 2024 Socrates Park Annual fellowship (on view). Her collaborative projects include Queen City (2023) by Nekisha Durrett, a large-scale, permanent public art installation and memorial which confronts the 1941 seizure of Black-owned land and displacement of 903 residents by the federal government for the construction of the Pentagon. In 2020, Turner was commissioned to collaboratively design and personally sculpt New York’s The Town Hall’s first inaugural Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact award, celebrating Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter and visual artist, Solange Knowles.

Nala holds a M.P.S. in Art Therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY; and previously received her B.A. in Psychology and a B.F.A in Ceramics from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO.