Ken Gonzales-Day : history's "nevermade" / edited by Amelia Jones.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gonzales-Day, Ken, artist.

Contributor:

Jones, Amelia, editor.

USC Fisher Museum of Art, host institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gonzales-Day, Ken--Exhibitions.

Gonzales-Day, Ken.

Gonzales-Day, Ken--Criticism and interpretation.

Historiography and photography--Exhibitions.

Historiography and photography.

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in art--Exhibitions.

Stereotypes (Social psychology) in art.

Art, Modern--21st century--Exhibitions.

Art, Modern.

Art, Modern--20th century--Exhibitions.

Conceptual art--21st century--Exhibitions.

Conceptual art.

Conceptual art--20th century--Exhibitions.

Artists--California--21st century--Exhibitions.

Artists.

Artists--California--20th century--Exhibitions.

Race awareness in art--Exhibitions.

Race awareness in art.

Racism in art--Exhibitions.

Racism in art.

Genre:

exhibition catalogs.

Exhibition catalogs.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 374 pages : illustrations (black and white, and color) ; 24 cm

Other Title:

History's "nevermade"

Place of Publication:

Bristol ; Chicago : Intellect Books, 2025.

Summary:

"Through visualizing, absence, and erasure, artist Ken Gonzales-Day reveals the deeply political act of seeing, forcing us to reconsider the histories we inherit. Gonzales-Day's work confronts the role of the visual in conveying history or in history's absences, including those bodies and spaces deliberately erased, forgotten, or never acknowledged. As illustrated and discussed in Ken Gonzales-Day: History's "Nevermade," his photography, films, drawings, and paintings interrogate race and power, questioning how bodies are seen rendered, or made invisible. His art moves between presence and absence, compelling viewers to confront their own position in relation to systems of oppression and representation. Accompanying the exhibition of the same name, this is the first comprehensive study of Gonzales-Day's practice"--Back cover.

"Accompanying an exhibition by the same name, this book addresses the life work of Ken Gonzales-Day, a Los Angeles based artist, scholar, teacher, and curator who explores race and place in his photographic and filmic works, drawings, and paintings as well as through his research and puts the artist's major series of art works in context"--Publisher's website.

Contents:

Introduction: Ken Gonzales-Day's "Nevermade" and the embodied reworking of discourse

Section 1: finding a path (early work)

Section 2: rethinking history (queering/ decolonizing the family)

Section 3: rethinking history (archives)

Section 4: collecting race (skin/ museums)

Section 5: forging community (publics)

Section 6: imaging bodies (portraits)

Section 7: redrawing boundaries (land).

Director's foreword / Bethany Montagano Acknowledgments / Amelia Jones Introduction: Ken Gonzales-Day's "Nevermade" and the embodied reworking of discourse / Amelia Jones

Section 1: finding a path (early work) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; Finding a Path: Amelia Jones in Dialogue with Ken Gonzales-Day ; Ken Gonzales-Day Narrative Timeline / Nadia Estrada and Yumu Huo (with Amelia Jones)

Section 2: rethinking history (queering/ decolonizing the family) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; Excerpts from Ramoncita Gonzales (aka Ken Gonzales-Day], The Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River (1892) (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996) / Ken Gonzales-Day ; The Archive and the Nevermade: Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Histories in Ken Gonzales-Day's Bone-Grass Boy / Ren Heintz

Section 3: rethinking history (archives) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; The Space Between: The Lynching Project / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Spectacularizing the Sacrifice: A Reading of the Erased Lynching Series / Cyrielle Léveque ; Searching for a Brown Commons: Racial Affect and Re-enactment in Ken Gonzales-Day's Lynching Projects / Mary K. Coffey

Section 4: collecting race (skin/ museums) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; Race, Whiteness, and Absence in Studio Practice / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Profiled / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Different Measures: From Xipe Totec to Facial Recognition to System Overload / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Metropolitan Division: Ken Gonzales-Day between the Getty Museum and the LAPD / Jason Hill ; The Profiled Series and Hemispheric Racial Formations / Tatiana Flores

Section 5: forging community (publics) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; Bringing Art Out of the Museum / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Art as Propaganda: Advertising for Racial Equality in Ken Gonzales-Day's Public Art / Ana Briz ; Stepping into Memory: Ken Gonzales-Day and the Alternative Los Angeles Walking Tour / Nadia Estrada

Section 6: imaging bodies (portraits) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; Queer-ish: Photography and the LGBTQ+ Imaginary / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Of Life as a Menace and a Shield: The Memento Mori and Pandemic Portrait Series / Taina Caragol Ken Gonzales-Day's Embodied Brown Historicity: Amelia Jones in Dialogue with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill

Section 7: redrawing boundaries (land) ; Introduction / Amelia Jones ; Another Land / Decolonial Drawings / Ken Gonzales-Day ; Engaging an Elder and Tracing the Past: Ken Gonzales-Day in Dialogue with Steve Pratt

Contributor biographies

Ken Gonzales-Day works: checklist.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Catalog of an exhibition at USC's Fisher Museum of Art from August 19, 2025-March 14, 2026.

Contains:

Gonzales-Day, Ken. Works. Selections.

ISBN:

9781835951378

1835951376

OCLC:

1540325873

Publisher Number:

CIPO000255805