Ruben Ochoa

Born in Oceanside, CA, Ruben Ochoa’s interdisciplinary practice spans three decades of engaging space as both a concept and a material. Ochoa’s works expose the ideological and broader sociopolitical and economic relationships that facilitate the way spaces we inhabit and move through are assembled.

In 2019, GSA Art in Architecture commissioned Mis Marcadores, Ochoa’s first large-scale permanent public installation at the US/Mexican Border in San Ysidro, California. In 2021, during the pandemic, Ochoa collaborated with LACMA x Snapchat: Monumental Perspectives to produce an AR lens, ¡Vendedores, Presente!, in partnership with All City Inclusion and Community Power Collective, non-profit organizations that support LA street vendors.

Solo exhibitions include Sampled y Surveyed, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, CA (2018); Watching, Waiting, Commiserating, MCASD, San Diego, CA (2016); Cores and Cutouts, Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2011); Building on the Fringes of Tomorrow, MCASD, CA (2010); and Crooked Under the Weight, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (2009).

Notable group exhibitions include Down These Mean Streets, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. (2017)); X-Change, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX (2013); The Future Generation Art Prize Exhibition, 54th Venice Biennale Collateral Event, Venice, Italy (2011); Phantom Sightings, LACMA, Los Angeles, CA (2008); and the 2008 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY.

Additional public art projects are Fwy Wall Extraction (2006-2007) eastbound on the 10 freeway in Los Angeles and CLASS: C mobile artist space (2001-2005) housed in the back of his family’s tortilla delivery Chevy van. Ochoa’s work is included in numerous public collections, including the Perez Art Museum, Hammer Museum, LACMA, MCA San Diego; MOCA, Los Angeles; Phoenix Art Museum; Smithsonian Museum of Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art.

Ochoa is a full-time Angeleno who enjoys teaching as a Roski Associate Professor of Practice in Art at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.