GUILLERMO BERT
Guillermo Bert is a Los Angeles-based artist whose multi-media works range from painting, sculpture, weaving, photography and print-making. Born in Santiago, Chile, in 1959, Bert’s bi-cultural background provides a rich, lived perspective that deeply informs his artistic practice. For decades, Guillermo Bert has explored themes of urbanism, consumerism, and cultural displacement—beginning in the 1990s with street-level bricolage projects inspired by the visual archaeology of posters and signage from LA’s Skid Row.
Over time, his work evolved to include technological elements, such as integrating barcodes into laser-cut pieces and paintings. A pivotal moment came in 2010 during his first trip back to Chile, where he began collaborating with Mapuche weavers. This experience profoundly shifted his practice. Together with these artisans, Bert embedded functional QR codes into traditional textile designs. When scanned, these "high-tech" patterns link to short films that capture the oral histories, myths, and reflections of Mapuche elders, activists, and poets.
Building on this concept, Bert expanded his collaborations to include Indigenous communities across the Americas, such as the Navajo, Maya, Mixtec, and Zapotec peoples. The result is an ongoing series of 40 short films—each approximately 10 minutes—that act as cultural time capsules, "decoding" Indigenous worldviews and fostering connection between viewers and the communities represented.
While these films are intrinsic to the textile works, they also stand alone as documentary media—intimate, observational glimpses into Indigenous lives, told in their own voices and often in their native languages. Together, they form a kind of visual "mini-series" spanning more than seven countries. Bert continues to expand the project globally, with future plans that include India, and works across a spectrum of media: from woven textiles and laser-cut sculptures to photographs and immersive films.
Guillermo Bert’s work is currently featured in Grounded, at the LA County Museum of Art, (Sept 2025 - July, 2026), a multi-media exhibition that illuminates the lasting effects of colonialism and imperialism. In 2023, Bert’s work was featured in a major mid-career retrospective entitled The Journey, at the Nevada Museum of Art, accompanied by a 200+ page catalog and a book. His work was acquired by The Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery and was included in their 50th-anniversary exhibition Crafting a New World in May 2022. Bert is in the permanent collections of LACMA and the Rhode Island Museum of Art as well.
Bert has exhibited his work nationally and internationally at museums and galleries including Queens Museum in NY, Palm Springs Museum, Lille3000 in France, Anchorage Museum in Alaska, Nevada Museum of Art, MoLAA (Museum of Latin American Art), Pasadena Museum of California Art, Museum of Art and Design in New York shows with L.A./L.A. Pacific Standard Time and the Folk and Craft Museum, and UCR (Riverside).
His work has been reviewed nationally and internationally by Smithsonian Magazine, ArtNews Magazine, LA Times, and LA Weekly. He was awarded a COLA individual artist grant from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and received the California Community Foundation Fellowship in 2015, the Center for Cultural Innovation Quick Grant for Education in 2015, and the 2010 Master Artist Grant from the National Association of Latino Arts.
Guillermo Bert’s career as an artist and educator has taken many forms, including Art Director for the Los Angeles Times (1995-2000) and Professor of Mixed Media at the Art Center School of Design, in Pasadena. During the pandemic, Bert participated in several online talks with museums including The Museum of Art and Design in NY, The George Washington University Museum in DC, and The Long Beach Museum of Latin American Art.
MEDIA
Art News
Hyperallergic
ArtNet
PR Newswire
Splash Magazine
Chicano Perspectives
ArtNews
Hyperallergic
Riot Material
Smithsonian Magazine
LA Times
LA Times
HuffPost
SELECTED WORKS
