Nala C. Turner is a Brooklyn-based visual artist, culture worker, and creative art therapist (MPS, LCAT, LCPC, ATR-BC), working across multiple disciplines of art-making and healing such as ceramics, sculpture, somatics, and art therapy.  She has over 15 years of experience working with clay as a visual artist and 10 years as an educator, previously serving as a family programs educator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, along with various other educational and career development spaces. As a visual artist, her work aims to instigate conversations exploring 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 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 collaborative projects include two large-scale permanent public art installations: Hem of Heaven (2026; Obama Presidential Center, Chicago, IL) and Queen City (2023; Metropolitan Park, Pentagon City, VA), both in collaboration with artist Nekisha Durrett. In 2020, Turner was commissioned to design and 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. 

As a creative arts therapist, Turner has explored the ardor of various mediums within both educational and mental health forums, including institutional, non-profit, and private-practice settings. Turner’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. 

Turner 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.