Born and raised in Los Angeles, Natalia Mantini is a self taught photographer with an exciting photography career born in the pit of LA punk shows. Mantini’s household blasted Depeche Mode, The Cure, Bauhaus – the excellent taste and influence of two Mexican goth parents. She’s a Scorpio stellium, like my ex-boyfriend, and people with this stellium are often described as having “a magnetic and mysterious quality, with an intense, transformative, and deeply emotional nature.” I see these qualities in her art. Mantini’s instinct for tension, beauty, and the in-between has led her to work with some of the most powerful women in music and modern culture including Kim Gordon, Chloë Sevigny, Abra, and Ethel Cain.
While being in her orbit for many years, we have never landed as friends, only recently in the Lot Radio trailer to celebrate the release of OZ. I’ve showcased her work in my gallery in 2015 in our Take Me Home Tonight exhibition, a group show which featured 100 art prints from 100 artists. It was a celebration of fine art as ephemera, something intended to only last for a short while, but sometimes it lasts a long time. Natalia’s print which featured her hand holding a rose was purchased by my little sister, the frequent mover (New Orleans, Toldeo, and back to NYC), who framed it and still has it on view in her bedroom all these years and moves later.
Natalia’s excellent music taste and mixes are available for you to explore on her Dublab radio show Casted in Caves – “an intentional spectrum of sounds pulled from natural elements and field recordings, ambient, black metal, shoe gaze, and classical.” She will have a new mix up soon, but in the meantime I asked her to make us a playlist, because once again I’d like to repeat, Music Discovery is Everything. Enjoy Below. And Happy Birthday to this Scorpio Queen !
A Playlist by Natalia Mantini – Tracklist
1. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky “Valse Sentimentale” [Released 1882]
2. Björk & Brodsky Quartet “Bachelorette” [Released 2002]
3. NGHTCRWLR “Emerald City” [Released 2025]
4. Lana Del Rey “A&W” [Released 2023]
5. Oklou, Malibu “choke enough (Malibu’s ambient city mix)” [Released 2025]
6. SOPHIE “Faceshopping” [Released 2018]
7. Charli XCX featuring John Cale “House” [Released 2025]
8. Eartheater “Supersoaker” [Released 2019]
9. Mazzy Star “Roseblood” [Released 1996]
10. Cocteau Twins “Cherry-Coloured Funk” [Released 1990]
11. Kate Bush “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” [Released 1985]
12. Björk & Brodsky Quartet “Play Dead” [Released 1993]