Mercedes Dorame uses photography and installation to explore, reimagine, and connect to her Tongva tribal culture and bring visibility to contemporary indigenous experience. Born in Los Angeles, CA, Dorame received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA. Dorame’s work is in the permanent collections of the Hammer Museum, SFMoMA, the Triton Museum, the Allen Memorial Art Museum, the de Saisset Museum, The Montblanc Foundation Collection, and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum. She is the recipient of grants from the Montblanc Art Commission, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Loop Artist Residency, the James Phelan Award for California-born visual artists, En Foco’s New Works Photography Fellowship Awards program, Galería de la Raza for a solo exhibition there, the Harpo Foundation for a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and from the Photography Department at SFAI for her MFA Studies. She is currently visiting faculty at CalArts, and was recently honored by UCLA as part of the centennial initiative “UCLA: Our Stories Our Impact,” and was part of the Hammer Museum’s 2018 Made in LA exhibition. She has also displayed her work at the Triton Museum, the deSaisset, LACE, and Reflect Space, as well as other international venues. Her writing has been featured in News From Native California and her artwork has been highlighted by PBS Newshour, KCET Artbound, The New York Times, Art in America, Hyperallergic, KQED, Artsy, ARTnews, The Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others.