Albert Chong

Galleries + News

Image & Imagination: The Photographs of Albert Chong at the Main Gallery, Fine Arts Center, University of Rhode island, Kingston, Rhode Island, USA, from February 8 - March 25, 2021, Artist Talk via Zoom on February 23 , at 2PM Eastern Standard time, zoom link for the artist Talk is https://forms.gle/bsYQjZCDxUJYxmx89

Screen Shot 2017-11-19 at 7.35.22 PM.png

photomosaics
tiled+ transferred

My most recent body of work is titled the Tile Photomosaics. The work consist of image transfers onto four or six inch tiles that constitute a larger image. The narrative themes operating in these works span the gamut of issues.

view photomosaics

Art for me is a process of deep communication that has few parallels in the creative world. It permits and encourages an exchange of ideas at a faster rate and with more accessibility and subtle nuances than conventional methods of communication. I think of art as humanity’s second language, a universal tongue that has infinite dialects that has infinite meanings and ideas that can be clearly transmitted if the artist so desires.

Learn More

Albert Chong is a contemporary artist working in the mediums of photography, installation and sculpture. His works have dealt directly with personal mysticism, spirituality, race and identity and numerous other topics as well as celebrating the beauty of images and objects.

Learn More

Natural Mystic, 1982

From the I-Trait series

Ayinde & I, 1982

From the I-Trait (Self-portrait) series

Dancing with the Palo, 1982-84

Natural Mystic #2, 1982, Exhaling Ganja Smoke,

Figurative Still Life, 1982-85

Minimal Mystic 1982

Seated Presence, 1992

From the I-Trait (self-portrait) series

Avenging Angel, Study for Winged Evocations 1998

Self-portrait with Marcus Garvey's Prison Docket, 1993

Self-Portrait with Eggs, 1985

From the I-Trait (self-portrait) series

The Buddha, 1998

Self-portrait with Baboon Skull, 1994

Winged Desire, 1994

I-Scape, 1985

Blessing The Throne, 1993

Cairn Ritual, 1994

Wearing the Macka Shirt, 1998

Materials : Suede Shirt, Bougainvillea Thorns, Hawthorn Thorns

Leaning on the Palo, 1983

From the I-Traits series

Annointing Eggs, 1985 (Variant)

From the I-Traits Series (Self-Portrait series)

My work has sought to give expression to my human visual intuition that operates at levels inhospitable to verbal or literary expression. Each work can function independently but is connected to the larger body of art that seeks to give my perspective on the story of our humanity and our rapidly disintegrating connection to the natural world.

Learn More

My early works in photography earned critical recognition for its contribution to the multiculturalism movement in the visual arts specifically my visual narratives on race, identity, family, nationalism, mysticism and spirituality as expressed in art.

Learn More

Throne For The Gorilla Spirits, 1993

The Thrones for the Ancestors

Whilstl living in Brooklyn, New York in 1987, I picked up a discarded chair from the streets of my neighborhood in Williamsburg. I took it home and set to work covering the exposed wood of this wicker chair with the dried and preserved skin of salted codfish. Why the skin of salted Cod you may ask? Salted Cod is an essential ingredient in the national dish of my home country Jamaica. This is because Canada was a colony of England during slavery and it was imported as a protein source for slave rations. The chair was then used in the creation of the photograph titled Throne for the Ancestors. At the time of the making of this work I did not have a significant reason for its creation. At the time I was very interested in the idea of Art Brut or the notion of art being a deeply primitive aesthetic trait that is but the vessel or medium for the transmission of culturally abstract notions, ideas and concepts of human expression that can not be presented in any other means but the visual.

I was interested in the notion of the Intuitive Artist, one who could locate, focus and transmit the obscure messages and images, sounds and dance that were the cultural signifiers that were embedded and confused within the bodies and consciousness of the survivors of slavery, poverty, servitude in effect the Post Colonial condition. I was searching for a model of the modern artist as a contemporary manifestation of the shaman. I was also in quest for the very elusive thesis of African and Asian retentions in the genetic descendants of those cultures that are usually most clearly expressed in the arts.

The Thrones were created based on this premise in which I would try to create work that was not conceived along the usual Eurocentric norms of representation. Instead the goal was to try to reconnect with an ancient collective consciousness. The series gets its name from the title of the above mentioned work from 1987. Thrones are transcendent chairs that were the primary visual symbol of the power of Rule or Royalty, only the crown is the other most recognizable symbol. I have over the years developed a cursory interest in chairs/thrones and have endeavored to embellish and transform found chairs into thrones that were named based on the entities that they represented. The Thrones functioned not unlike shrines or altars to spirits or deities and served as the seat of mystical power in invoking the presences of the Ancestors.

Throne for the Justice 1991 is based on my father and is graced with his image on the seat. While Throne for Mr. Baker is about my paternal grandfather and he is represented with a clay head while still others are dedicated to the Orishas or saints or spirit forces of Santeria.

Albert Chong, May 30, 2019,