Mercedes Dorame is a multi-disciplinary artist who calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of (in)visibility and ideas of cultural construction and ancestral connection to land and sky. Born in Los Angeles, California, Dorame received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA. 

She is currently a regular faculty member at CalArts, and was part of the initial cohort of the Unseen California research initiative. Her sculptural installation Woosha’aaxre Yaangaro was highlighted by the Getty Museum as their inaugural Rotunda Commission artist. Her work was explored in the Los Angeles Times article, “How artist Mercedes Dorame shares pieces of her Tongva heritage across L.A.’s public landscapes,” and she was honored by UCLA as part of the centennial initiative “UCLA: Our Stories Our Impact” as an outstanding alumna working in equal justice over the last 100 years. 

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Getty Museum, the Hammer Museum, The Kadist Collection, LACMA, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She has received fellowships and support from the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts in 2024, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship in 2023, and the Creative Capital Award in 2020, among others. Dorame has shown her work internationally.