MEET KEN GONZALES-DAY
“As a queer Chicanx of mixed-ancestry I was aware of intersectionality long before I ever knew there was a term for it.”
Ken Gonzales-Day, courtesy of the artist
Ken Gonzales-Day is a Los Angeles based artist whose interdisciplinary practice considers the historical construction of race and the limits of representational systems. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, an MA in art history from Hunter College, an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and was a Van Leer Fellow in studio art at the Whitney Museum's ISP program. He is a longtime professor of art and Fletcher Jones Chair in Art at Scripps College. His work has been widely exhibited and can be found in the museum collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MoMA, MOCA Los Angeles, The Art Institute of Chicago, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among others. Gonzales-Day has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including grants from Art Matters, Creative Capital, California Community Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Los Angeles’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Smithsonian’s SARF award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography. His monographs include Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke University Press, 2006) and Profiled (LACMA, 2011). Gonzales-Day holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Art at Scripps College.
Work
The Wonder Gaze: Lynching of Thomas Thurmond & John Holmes in Saint James Park, 1933, San Jose, CA. (2006), Erased Lynching Series
Untitled (Antico [Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi], Bust of a Young Man, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Francis Hardwood, Bust of a man, The J. Paul Museum, Los Angeles, CA), in How Many Billboards? MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, 2010
Installation view, Shadowlands, Minnesota Museum of American Art
Installation view of Constellations
mentor profile
Queer|Art|Mentorship will be accepting applications from emerging artists across the country. Are you open to working with someone remotely, or would you prefer they are based in the same city as you?
“Remote is okay.”
What interests you about mentoring?
“I was asked and I do teach for a living.”
Given your experience and interests, what kind of emerging artist do you feel best positioned to support?
“Someone who works in photography, or with photographic images in some form.”
As a mentor, what would you like to offer an emerging artist? What would you like to receive?
“I would hope I could offer general advice on art, and also happy to be connected to the queer community.”