KEN GONZALES-DAY: Afterlife

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is pleased to announce Ken Gonzales-Day: Afterlife the artist’s sixth solo exhibition on view in Gallery 1 and Gallery 2 from November 8 through December 20 2025. An opening reception will take place on Saturday November 8 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. 

Known for his conceptually driven photography and his investigations into race and historical memory Gonzales-Day presents a new body of work that underscores the vital role of museum collections in celebrating the breadth of human experience. 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. The exhibition's title Afterlife evokes the enduring afterlife of cultural objects as both artistic expressions and historical artifacts within a larger cultural framework while challenging the traditional narratives presented in museums. 

Over the past 20 years Gonzales-Day has photographed objects in museum collections and digitally reassembled them into new works. By combining these objects Gonzales-Day creates playful and sometimes haunting images that are both timely and timeless encouraging us to see our interconnectedness. The exhibition’s central piece a large-scale photographic mural titled Xipe Totec with Busts brings together images of busts of George Washington Abraham Lincoln Benjamin Franklin and Susan B. Anthony (photographed during his residency at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery) with Mexica and Mesoamerican objects set amongst a deathly pile of skulls from the Museum of Criminal Anthropology in Turin. The work may incite reflection on the precarious state of museums and the battles being fought on both the cultural and global fronts. 

Another series of works draw their inspiration from LACMA’s permanent collection which served as the basis for the creation of a recently completed monumental public work entitled Urban Excavation: Ancestors Avatars Bodhisattvas Buddhas Casts Copies Deities Figures Funerary Objects Gods Guardians Mermaids Metaphors Mothers Possessions Sages Spirits Symbols and Other Objects. It was commissioned by the Los Angeles MTA for the new D Line Subway Extension Wilshire/Fairfax Station. Here Gonzales-Day uses museum objects as a starting point for artistic and cultural "excavation" aiming to recover and bring new life to works that may have been overlooked or silenced while also bringing attention to the lack of representation of Black brown queer and other marginalized bodies in many museum collections offering a critical and visual framework for rethinking these objects. 

In another work entitled Dying Gaul/Chac Mool Gonzales-Day juxtaposes the iconic Dying Gaul a Roman copy of a lost Greek original humanizing a so-called barbarian with a Mesoamerican Chac Mool figure a reclining stone sculpture associated with rituals of sacrifice and renewal. 

It is a portal between worlds and reminds us that the line between art and life can be hard to separate. The two works echo one another but unlike the myth of Narcissus evoked by the composition the reflection suggests that something unseen and powerful lies just beneath the surface—a subtle reference to Latinx communities in the U.S. 

Ken Gonzales-Day: AfterLife is complemented by the artist’s first survey exhibition Ken Gonzales-Day History’s Nevermade curated by Dr. Amelia Jones on view at the USC Fisher Museum of Art through March 2026. It includes a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by leading scholars in art history Latinx Studies and visual culture. 

Ken Gonzales-Day (b. 1964 Santa Clara CA) received his MFA in art from UC Irvine; his MA in art history from Hunter College C.U.N.Y.; and was a Van Leer Fellow at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (ISP). Fellowships include: the Getty Research Institute (GRI) The Smithsonian SAAM fellowship in American Art and the Smithsonian Artist Fellowship (SARF); The Terra Foundation in Giverny France; The Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio Italy. Gonzales-Day has received fellowships and awards from Art Matters The Avery Foundation California Community Foundation the Los Angeles' COLA award Creative Capital Fellowship and a Guggenheim in Photography. 

His work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Los Angeles CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles CA; J. Paul Getty Museum Los Angeles CA; Getty Research Institute Los Angeles CA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art CA; The National Gallery Art Washington DC; Smithsonian American Art Museum Washington DC; National Portrait Gallery Washington DC; Museum of Modern Art New York; George Eastman Museum Rochester NY; Baltimore Museum of Art Baltimore MD; Norton Museum of Art Palm Beach FL; Art Institute of Chicago Chicago IL; Minnesota Museum of American Art St. Paul MN; Kalamazoo Institute of Art Kalamazoo MI; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum Michigan State University East Lansing MI; Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College Hanover NH; The Art Museum of Dickinson College Carlisle PA; Middlebury College Museum of Art Middlebury VT; Williamson Gallery Scripps College Claremont CA; Pomona College Museum of Art CA; Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney; L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts Paris; Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle Paris; among others. Monographs include: Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 (Duke) and Profiled (LACMA 2011) Surface Tension (Artist’s Book 2017). Gonzales-Day received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2017 and has received fellowships and awards from Art Matters COLA California Community Foundation Creative Capital Smithsonian (SARF) The Rockefeller Foundation and holds the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair in Art at Scripps College. 

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