Nala C. Turner

Nala C. Turner is a Brooklyn-based ceramics artist, culture worker, and creative art therapist (MPS, LCAT, ATR-BC), working primarily with themes related to race-issues, cultural identity, femininity, social stereotype, and popular culture perspectives. She has been working with clay for 15 years as a visual artist and educator, previously operating as a family programs educator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in other numerous institutional, workshop, and private-practice settings.

As a visual artist, her work aims to instigate a conversation exploring the dichotomy between softness and strength, highlighting negative tropes associated with the traits of masculinity, virility, and aggression of Black people. Challenging the distorted conventions within American culture that influence society’s notions about people of color, Nala seeks to redefine what Blackness means and confirm such strength as an enhancement of beauty.

Her most recent work is on display in the permanent public art installation––Queen City by Nekisha Durrett –– 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, Nala collaboratively designed and personally sculpted New York’s The Town Hall first inaugural Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact award, celebrating GRAMMY Award-winning singer/songwriter and visual artist, Solange Knowles.

As a creative arts therapist, Nala has explored the ardor of various mediums within both educational and mental health forums, including institutional, non-profit, and private-practice settings. Through clay-work, Nala aims to inspire her audience to recognize culturally restricting barriers and transubstantiate the inaccurate representation of Black and multiethnic people. Nala’s mission is to share clay-work’s ability to create a symbol of one’s inner world and living experiences, to bring insight to one’s Self, and its contributions to overall healing and wellbeing through sublimative integration.

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.