About

Debra Scacco is a research-based artist whose practice spans the creation of studio works, installations, public art, curating, teaching, writing, community engagement and oral history. Her work is dedicated to examining our understanding of knowledge in ways that challenge historic power structures. Scacco’s work is included in collections internationally including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hammer Museum and CAA. She is Founding Director of climate-focused creative research program Air Projects, Co-Director of Getty Pacific Standard Time project Brackish Water Los Angeles, and Co-Founder of art worker mutual aid cooperative Contemporary Art League. She is an organizing member of Artists Commit, an initiative to address climate-conscious practice in the art world. In 2012, she was the inaugural artist-in-residence at Ellis Island Museum (New York City). She is currently the artist-in-residence at Santa Monica City Yards, in their Water and Resource, Recovery & Recycling Division.

Joel Garcia (Huichol) is an artist and cultural organizer with 20+ years of experience working transnationally and focusing on community-centered strategies. His approach is rooted in Indigenous-based forms of dialoguing and decision-making (non-hierarchical) that uplifts non-institutional expertise. Joel uses art and organizing to raise awareness of issues facing underserved communities, inner-city youth, and other targeted populations.

Garcia is co-founder and Director of Meztli Projects, an Indigenous-based arts & culture collaborative centering Indigeneity into the creative practice of Los Angeles by using arts-based strategies to support, advocate for, and organize to highlight Native and Indigenous Artists and marginalized and targeted youth. He has developed projects and programs that center Native and Indigenous Peoples such as IndigenARTS & Wellness, Land Under The Plinth, and Ready 2 Rise’s Cultural Worker Apprentice Program. His artistic work explores healing and reconciliation, as well as memory and place, and has been a critical component of Los Angeles’s reckoning regarding monuments, memorials, public space, and creating a more authentic narrative of the city’s history.