Maru Garcia

Vacuoles: Bioremediating Cultures

Installation, ceramics, video, webcam, lead-contaminated soil

About the artist

Maru Garcia

Maru García is a Mexican transdisciplinary artist and researcher working across art + science + environment. Her methodology includes both the social and hard sciences, combining a versatile laboratory and fieldwork from her background in plant chemistry and the chemical industry. Her use of media includes research, installations, performance, sculpture, and video, usually with the presence of some kind of organic matter to help understand the biological processes occurring in complex systems. Her areas of interest are explorations on biosystems, interspecies relationships, and the capacity of living organisms (including humans) to act as remediators in contaminated sites. Her work highlights the importance of eco-aesthetics, where relationships and community are proposed to build a culture of regeneration. At the same time, she questions the ways science and technology have influenced the relationship between humans within the natural world.

Since 2017, Maru has collaborated with the Art-Sci Center and Counterforce Lab at UCLA. She is a 2020- 2021 Sci-Art Ambassador for Supercollider. She has participated in conferences, solo and group exhibitions in North America, Europe, and Asia: solo exhibition ´Membrane Tensions’ Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; ‘Eco consciousness’ Ecoartspace, Santa Fe, New Mexico; ‘Tellurian Vibrations’ Art-Sci Center, ARS Electronica Festival; ‘Phytopia’ Science Gallery Bengaluru, India; ‘Artificial Ecologies’ Virtual Exhibition; ‘Re-Fest’ Culture Hub, Los Angeles; ‘Spring Break’ Art Show Los Angeles; ‘Beyond embodiment’ Group Exhibition Brand Library & Art Center; ‘National Brownfields Conference’ Los Angeles Convention Center; “Bio-cultures” Group Exhibition Supercollider Gallery; ‘Atenea’ Group Exhibition Valencia, Spain; ‘Vivarium’ Solo Show California Nanosystems Institute. She worked at the Getty Research Institute in the 2019-2020 Scholar program titled “Art and Ecology”. She was an artist in residence in the National Center of Genetic Resources in Mexico and received awards from Los Angeles Sustainability Collaborative, Clifton Webb Scholarship for the Arts, and Fundación Jumex. She is a Getty Foundation grant recipient for the exhibition “Sink: places we call home” with Self Help Graphics & Art, to be presented in the Pacific Standard Time Art x Science x LA in 2024.

Maru holds an MFA in Design & Media Arts from UCLA as well as an M.S. in Biotechnology and a B.S. in Chemistry both from Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. Currently, she lives in LA.