CSULB Professor Emeritus Todd Gray at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

CSULB Photography Professor Emeritus Todd Gray has a solo show at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. The exhibition Todd Gray / Matrix 186—which opened on March 4, 2021 and will run through July 18, 2021—was curated by Patricia Hickson. As Carolina S. Miranda of the Los Angeles Times writes in her article “Essential Arts: Todd Gray turns colonialism and the art of photography on its head”, “In these works, imperial gardens are turned on their side and embedded alongside photos of wetlands in Nigeria and a grove of palms in Ghana. Photographs of European statues are turned upside down and shown alongside a ghostly Nigerian Eyo. Ships — those great conveyers of exploration and the slave trade — intrude on the landscape. These are worlds turned upside down, then spun right side up again.” The show also features Gray’s largest piece to date (at 34 feet long!), entitled Sumptuous Memories of Plundering Kings (2021). As Miranda writes, “The work is history writ in visceral, photographic form: the landscapes that fed the slave trade are juxtaposed with the people who amassed wealth from it, along with the ghosts that remain.”

Congratulations, Professor Gray, on the amazing and beautiful work!