Camilo Ontiveros is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who has sustained an interrogation of migration, value, law, politics, and economy across the Americas for the past two decades.  Born in Rosario, Sinaloa, México, Ontiveros immigrated to Southern California in 1993. In the early 2000's, Ontiveros was part of a vibrant cultural scene between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico.  He co-founded Lui Velazquez, an artist's run space next to the San Isidro border crossing that was a vital hub for cultural production and international artistic exchange in the region.  During this period, he also initiated bold public projects such as CAUTION (2005) which intervened in freeway signage on the U.S. side of the border.

Ontiveros’ work is at the forefront of cultural discussions concerning migration. His practice bears witness to lives upended by deportation, creates space to process and mourn immigrant lives, and forces cultural institutions to reckon with the borders they themselves maintain. Projects like Temporary Storage: The Belongings of Juan Manuel Montes (2017) emerge out of relationships with people, often undocumented, who have been absented, deported, or made to live in shadows. Ontiveros arranges their objects-- found, discarded, bought, loaned or left behind-- as a material index of their work and lives, and as a testament to their vulnerability in the wake of racist laws and political processes. Projects like Memorias (2011) and The Burial of Anastacio Hernandez (2011) create space to process and mourn immigrant lives lost, whether due to dangerous working conditions, violent border enforcement, or everyday precarity. Projects like Free Entry (California Biennial Law) (2010) or El Pedón (2012) engage with the discourse and materiality of law and force cultural institution where the work is exhibited to reckon with the biases of law and declare where they stand.In his most recent work, Ontiveros has developed epic film projects that frame migration through hemispheric, ecological, and non-anthropocentric worldviews.  In Travelling Dust (2014), he poetically traces migration as a reciprocal movement of cultural forms across the Americas.  In Liquid Light (2022), Ontiveros considers the question of migration through the movement of water as it is shaped by global climate change and the politics of distribution across borders.

Ontiveros was awarded the 2010 Illy Prize at Arco Madrid and has received grants from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, Art Matters, Mentes Quo, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. He has exhibited his work across Europe, Asia, and the Americas in significant cultural venues such as the North Coast Art Triennial in Copenhagen, Denmark; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, USA; Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Canada; the Vargas Museum in Manila, Philippines; Mind Set Art in Taipei, Taiwan; Art Laboratory in Berlin, Germany; Arco Madrid in Madrid, Spain; SalaSab in Bogotá, Colombia; and Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, Mexico. Ontiveros earned an MFA in Art with a specialization in New Genres from the University of California, Los Angeles and a BA in Studio Art from the University of California, San Diego.