Rebeca Méndez

Rebeca Méndez is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator examining reciprocal relationships and environmental justice in a multi-species world amid climate change, mass extinction, and a ravaging extractivist society. Her fieldwork has taken her to vulnerable environments and communities in the Arctic and threatened ecologies in the Pacific Ocean. Méndez’s diverse works are driven by her interest in perception and embodied experience and develop within science and art and manifest as immersive video and sound installations, public art, film, and performance. Bridging scientific and indigenous perspectives, Méndez has collaborated with significant science institutions and Acjachemen, Tongva, Ohlone, and Zapotec communities. Exhibitions include three PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibitions, the 1st Gangwon International Triennale, and the 55th Venice Biennial. Permanent collections include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca, and the El Paso Museum of Art. Méndez is a professor at UCLA, Design Media Arts, and is the founder and director of the Counterforce Lab, a research studio that harnesses the power of art and design to engage with the reality of the global ecological crisis and its ties to environmental injustice.