Mundo Meza

In 2014 and 2015, the Getty Foundation awarded grants totaling $270,000 for exhibition research, support, and implementation of Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. Organized by the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, the exhibition takes its name from Meza's work and focuses on queer, Chicanx artists and their collaborations from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The exhibit was first shown at the ONE Archives' gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles before traveling to several galleries across the United States. Co-curators C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz worked for four years, on behalf of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California to assemble and research the collection for the exhibition, spending time in Mexico, Spain, and England.

By 1983, his work became increasingly lyrical and abstract. Most of his paintings depicted the Chicano Body as a site for subversion and were calm simplified compositions. This change in tone was his method of using modernist abstraction in order to shed light on a new dialectic figure of queerness in the face of AIDS.

In the early 1980s, Meza collaborated with British designer Simon Doonan, producing surreal and shocking window displays for Maxfield Bleu in West Hollywood and other Melrose Avenue boutiques. Parody and satire were a common theme which set them apart from other displays.

From 1976 to 1978, Meza danced with the Aisha Dance Company. He performed, with his long time partner Carlos “Charles” Docando for the opening of the King Tut exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in March 1978.

Meza graduated from Huntington Park High School in 1973 with a scholarship to Otis Art Institute.

Meza is widely known for his collaborations with Robert Legorreta (Cyclona) and Gronk during the early 1970s. His work included a number of confrontational performances in East Los Angeles, including, Caca-Roaches Have No Friends. His early practice combined Chicano Nationalism with visual panache and psychedelic experimentation in order to enunciate the ideology behind his work.

Edmundo Meza (July 19, 1955 - February 11, 1985), also known as Mundo Meza, was an artist and activist who was born in Tijuana, Mexico and grew up in East Los Angeles. He discovered his passion for the area's avant-garde culture in early 1970. As an emerging artist, Mundo Meza worked for shoe designer Fred Slatten on Santa Monica Boulevard as a window dresser. He also painted unique designs onto Slatten's platform shoes, gathering a celebrity clientele which included Cher, Elton John, and Diana Ross.