Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (b. 1967, Mexico City) received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montréal, Canada in 1989. A media artist who creates platforms for public participation using technologies such as robotic lights, digital fountains, computerized surveillance, media walls, and telematic networks, he was the first artist to represent Mexico at the Venice Biennale in 2007. He has been the subject of nine solo exhibitions worldwide, including a major show at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., the inaugural show at the Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, and a mid-career retrospective co-produced by Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and SFMOMA. He has also shown at biennials in Cuenca, Havana, Istanbul, Kochi, Liverpool, Melbourne, Moscow, New Orleans, New York, Seoul, Seville, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and Wuzhen. Permanent collections that feature his work include the Guggenheim Museum, Museo del Barrio, and MoMA, New York; Fundación Jumex, Mexico City; KZM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; MUAC, Mexico City; MONA, Hobart, Tasmania; Daros Collection, Zürich; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Science Museum, London; Singapore Art Museum; and Tate, London, among many others. His public artworks have been commissioned for the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the Student Massacre Memorial in Tlatelolco (2008), the Vancouver Olympics (2010), the pre-opening exhibition of the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi (2015), and the activation of the Raurica Roman Theatre in Basel (2018). In 2019, his immersive performance Atmospheric Memory premiered at the Manchester International Festival and his interactive installation Border Tuner connected people across the US-Mexico border using bridges of light controlled by the voices of participants in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and El Paso, Texas. Currently, his ongoing memorial to the victims of Covid-19 is on view at the Brooklyn Museum.
