Albert Chong
Sisters,
1986
inkjet print on canvas with inscribed copper mat
27 1/2 x 23 1/2"
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| Albert Chong’s work reads like an autobiographical diary of a displaced Diaspora body. His collections of images offer the viewer a curiosity cabinet of iconographic objects and bodies that act much like souvenirs of the past. Aged family photos juxtaposed with collected mementos and meaningful objects; dried flowers, bones and old letters, when grouped and displayed together, act like a souvenir photo album or scrap-book gone awry. Chong’s images meticulously decorated with his personal iconography allude to standard Western postmodern terms like readymade, assemblage and self-portrait. His work, while connecting to these already established genres, is something else altogether. Chong’s work defies theoretical analysis (or at least makes it difficult) because of its intentional emotive content. Work like this, which draws from a myriad of ancestral visual traditions including African and Chinese, brings the viewer to a borderland of culture, ethnicity, state and spirit. Chong has received numerous fellowships including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1991 and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in Awards photo in 1998. He has represented Jamaica in international biennials in Johannesburg, Havana and Venice. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. He is currently living in Colorado and teaching at the University of Colorado, Boulder. | |
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