New Landscapes: Mercedes Dorame

MOCA members at the Curators Circle level and above are invited to an off-site conversation between artist Mercedes Dorame and artist and community organizer Emma Robbins.

Born in Los Angeles and a member of the Gabrielino-Tongva Indians of California, Dorame feels connected to the landscape of Southern California. Drawing on her ancestry, Dorame engages photography, sculpture and installation to explore, reimagine, and connect to Tongva tribal culture while bringing visibility to contemporary Indigenous experiences. In a conversation guided by her work, the pair will discuss Dorame’s practice and her sustained interest in our complex relationships to the land.

An invitation with event details will be emailed to members at the Curators Circle level ($1,500) and above. Memberships can be purchased or renewed online. If you would like to upgrade an existing membership, please contact the Membership Department at membership@moca.org.

About Mercdes Dorame
Mercedes Dorame is a visual artist who calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of visibility and ideas of cultural construction as an outcome of the need to tie one’s existence to the land. In addition to working as a visual artist, she currently is visiting faculty at California Institute of the Arts and acts as a cultural resource consultant on sites where her Tongva ancestors and items are being excavated. Dorame recently received a Creative Capital Award and was honored by UCLA as an outstanding alum of the last 100 years working in Equal Justice. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Triton Museum of Art, Allen Memorial Art Museum, de Saisset Museum, Montblanc Foundation Art Collection, and Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, among others.

About Emma Robbins
Emma Robbins is a Diné artist, activist, and community organizer. As Executive Director of the Navajo Water Project, part of the human rights nonprofit DigDeep Water, she is working to create infrastructure that brings clean running water to the one in three Navajo families without it. Robbins is also the founder of The Chapter House, an Indigenous women-led community arts space, designed for Natives and welcoming all. All of her work is centered around education, Indigenization, and community collaboration.

Robbins completed her BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied Modern Latin American Art History in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been featured in The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar and NPR, and has lectured at Yale University, Brown University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robbins is an Aspen Institute Healthy Communities Fellow, serves on the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and is a recipient of an Environmental Leader Award. Robbins is a mother, has a dog names Cindy Sherman, and splits her time on Tongvaland (Los Angeles) and the Navajo Nation.

About New Landscapes
New Landscapes is a series of member events that underscores the work of artists, activists, and scholars committed to pressing ecological issues in Los Angeles and around the globe. Exploring varied responses to climate, conservation, and environmental justice, New Landscapes is guided by the mission of MOCA’s Environmental Council, the first sustainability council at a major arts museum in the United States. Recent programs in this series include off-site exhibition walkthroughs with artists Beatriz Cortez and Carl Cheng, tours of Metabolic Studio and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, and hands-on workshops with Mujeres de Maiz and Sustainable Little Tokyo.