Exhibition Walkthroughs: Ken Gonzales-Day & John M. Valadez

Ken Gonzales-Day: Afterlife

Over the past 20 years, Gonzales-Day has photographed objects in museum collections and digitally reassembled them into new works. Drawing on his own cultural influences, he brings together objects from the Mexica and broader Mesoamerican traditions with those from Europe, Africa, and Asia, foregrounding his intersectional perspective as a Queer Latinx artist. By combining these collected objects in photomontage, Gonzales-Day creates playful and sometimes poignant images that are both timely and timeless, encouraging us to discover our own connections.

John M. Valadez: A Two Second Gaze — Street Photography from the 1970s and 80s

A Two Second Gaze—Photography from the 1970s and 80s presents a selection of rarely and never exhibited photographs by John M. Valadez from his seminal body of work, the East Los Angeles Urban Portrait Portfolio. The series is a visual archive of portraits of neighbors, friends, and everyday people he encountered on walks through his neighborhood in East Los Angeles and his studio in Downtown L.A.'s theater district. By situating this work in Asian, Black, Brown, and immigrant communities, Valadez activated the Chicano movement’s concerns: visibility, space, and pride.