Rebeca
Mendez

Rebeca Méndez (Mexico City, 1962) 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 Eastern Pacific Ocean. Méndez’s diverse works are driven by her interest in perception and embodied experience, and they develop within the intersection of science and art, manifesting 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. Her works have been exhibited extensively worldwide, including at three PST ART: Art & Science Collide exhibitions—Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2024–25), Storm Cloud: Picturing our Climate Crisis at the The Huntington (2024–25), and Of Sea and Sky at the Mount Wilson Observatory (2024). Other exhibitions include the 1st Gangwon International Triennale 2021 (Gangwon-do, Korea) and the 55th Venice Biennale. Méndez’s works are in permanent collections, including at 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, among others. Rebeca Méndez has been recognized with four of the most significant awards in the field of design: the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Communication Design in 2012, the AIGA Medal in 2017, induction into the One Club Hall of Fame in 2017, and induction into the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 2023. Méndez has received the California Community Foundation Fellowship, the City of Los Angeles Award (COLA), the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency, and the CODA Award in Public Spaces. Her work was showcased on the PBS NewsHour, Art and Culture Series CANVAS. She earned a BFA and 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 at UCLA and the founder and director of the Counterforce Lab. This research studio harnesses the power of art and design to engage with the reality of the global ecological crisis and its ties to environmental injustice.