The Profiled Series and Hemispheric Racial Formations

Ken Gonzales-Day's Profiled series (2010 — ) interrogates systems of racial construction through photographic composites of figurative art objects. In one set of images, the artist stages confrontations of black and white. In another, he upsets binary schema to explore how multiple variables complicate straightforward signification. This essay relates selected works that comprise the series to hemispheric processes of racialization, especially Latinidad.

Keywords: American photography ; art and race ; Chicano art ; Critical race art history ; ethnic studies ; hemispheric racialization ; Latinx art ; Latinx photography ; Mestizaje and art ; Mexican-American art