Mercedes Gertz was born in Mexico City and works from studio residences in Mexico City, Los Angeles, CA and Lausanne, Switzerland. She holds a BA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York, as well as an MA in Fine Arts from the Otis School of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and a PhD in Depth Psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Bárbara, California. Mercedes was awarded a grant for young artists by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (FONCA) in 1988. From 2001 to present she has worked in community practice and offered workshops on art as a language to Latino families in Los Angeles, California. She has also given workshops in Mexico, Los Angeles, and Paris, focused on the study of dreams and fairy tales as a symbolic language that articulates aspects that words cannot express. Her paintings, conceptual installations, and graphics have been exhibited in Mexico, the US, and Europe. As of 2018, she has been the co-founder of Women’s Salon LA, an international collective of female artists that have been working and exhibiting in Los Angeles, that collaborate with up to 76 women from 7 cities in three different continents. Her social practice projects are inspired by her ongoing interest in building creative and collaborative communities that foster and highlight the skilled work of women.