Panel Discussion: Cultural Identity and Representation

Oct 5, 2024 4PM-5PM

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is appreciated.

Join us for a conversation with Rebeca Méndez and Kathya Maria Landeros, two Visiting Artists who both engage deeply with questions of identity and representation within their work. Kathya Maria Landeros focuses on the Latinx community and its diverse cultural narratives, exploring issues of migration, history, and belonging. Rebeca Méndez, through her interdisciplinary approach, explores cultural identity as it intersects with environmental concerns, addressing how cultural narratives influence and are influenced by environmental stewardship.

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Kathya Maria Landeros is a Mexican-American photographer and educator. Influenced by her bi-cultural upbringing, her work of almost two decades focuses on Latinx communities and the exploration of history, migration, representation and belonging. Her research has been supported through fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Fulbright, and residencies at the Rayko Photo Center and the Center for Photography at Woodstock. Prior to joining the faculty at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she is currently the Knafel Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Department of Art, she taught at public institutions of higher education in northern California and Massachusetts.

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. Solo exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Anchorage Museum, Laguna Art Museum, Nevada Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Oaxaca. Group exhibitions: 1st Gangwon International Triennale 2021, 55th Venice Biennial, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, El Paso Museum of Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Méndez has received significant recognition including a California Community Foundation Fellowship; The Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency; CODAaward in Public Spaces; inclusion into the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; induction into the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) and the One Club Creative Hall of Fame; recipient of the Medal of AIGA and the National Design Award in Communication Design. Her work was showcased on the PBS NewsHour, Art and Culture Series CANVAS. She earned a BFA, an MFA, and received the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from Art Center College of Design. Méndez is a tenured professor in the Department of Design Media Arts and founder and director of the Counterforce Lab at UCLA.