Chandra Dieppa Méndez-Ortiz is a Boston-based artist who engages with historical and personal narratives, discarded materials, paint and mark making through a series of inter-related works on paper, canvas, and wood in order to illustrate and connect nonlinear histories, memories, and places. She explores personal histories of labor, migration, colorism, protest, culture and love set against the backdrop of evolving civil, voting and housing rights policy in the U.S., in order to make direct connections to our society’s progress and struggles.

Méndez-Ortiz is in conversation with a history of mark making, drawing, painting and found objects while combining the historical and the contemporary in order to honor, learn from and reimagine the ways in which people of color, particularly Black people have navigated and contributed to American life. Méndez-Ortiz was born in 1972 in Paterson, New Jersey and was raised in Tampa, Florida. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Florida State University, a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a Master of Science in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art and Design.