Ken Gonzales-Day lives and works in Los Angeles. He received an MFA from UC Irvine, and an MA in Art History from Hunter College (C.U.N.Y). His interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems ranging from the lynching photograph to museum display. Searching for California Hang Trees series offered a critical look at the legacies of landscape photography in the West while his most recent project considers the origins of racial profiling. Profiled began as an exploration of the influence of eighteenth century "scientfic" thought on twenty-first century institutions from the prison to the museum, with an emphasis on the historical and artistic construction of difference. Using the sculpture and portrait bust collections of several major museums as a point of departure, he has photographed works at The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Getty Villa, The Field Museum in Chicago, The Museum of Man in San Diego, L'École des beaux-arts in Paris, Berlin's Bode museum, Caputh Palace, and Park Sanssouci in Potsdam.

Fellowships and Grants include: COLA; Art Matters; California Communtiy Foundation; Durfee Fondation; Graves Award for the Humanities; Visiting Scholar/Artist-in-Residence, Getty Research Institute; Senior Fellow, American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy; Fellow, ISP, Whitney Museum of American Art; His book Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 was published in 2006. His PAC Prize artist's book PROFILED was published in 2011. Gonzales-Day is Chair of the Art Department and a Professor at Scripps College.

Solo exhibitions include: Fred Torres Collaborations, NY, NY; Tufts University, Medford, MA; Las Cienegas Projects, L.A.; UCSD Art Gallery, La Jolla, CA; Steve Turner Contemporary, L.A.; Highways, Santa Monica, CA; SPACE, Portland, ME.; LAXART, L.A.; CUE Art Foundation, NY, NY; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; Susanne Vielmetter Projects, L. A.; Deep River, L. A.; Cristinerose Gallery, NY, NY; White Columns, NY, NY, among others.

Group exhibitions include: MDE11, Medellin; COLA 2011, LAMAG, L.A.; Spy Numbers, Palais de Tokyo, Paris;How Many Billboards, MAK Center, West Hollywood; State of Mind, MoPA, San Diego; Phantom Sightings, LACMA, L.A.(Traveled to Tamayo in Mexico City, San Antonio, Phoenix, Guadalajara, and Museo del Barrio in NYC); Encuentro Hemispherico, Bogota; Under Erasure, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin; Under Pain of Death, Austrian Cultural Forum, NYC; ArtMediaPolitique, DIX291, Paris; Viva Mexico, Zacheta National Gallery, Warsaw (traveled to Gallery of Contemp. Art, Wroclaw); Past Over, Steve Turner Contemporary, L.A.; Crimes of Omission, ICA Philadelphia; Exile of the Imaginary, Generali Foundation, Vienna; Civil Restitutions, Thomas Dane Gallery, London; An Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life, REDCAT, L.A.; Log Cabin, Artist's Space, NYC; Made in California, LACMA, L.A.; Reimaging the West, SF Camerawork, S. F.; FotoLatina, Museo de las Artes, Guadalajara, Five Continents and One City, Mexico City; and the Art Mall at the New Museum, NYC; among others.