Known for his photo-sculptural compositions that interrogate the long reach of colonization, Todd Gray draws from his own archive of photographs—taken over the course of five decades—to reorient how we see the world. With an incisive eye for detail, he directs our attention to the visual and historical connections between African landscapes and Renaissance interiors, pop icons and sculptural monuments, classical order and the digital glitch.
Golden is from a series Gray made while living at the American Academy in Rome from 2022–23 after being awarded the prestigious Rome Prize. The artwork juxtaposes a self-portrait of Gray from his Shaman series, with the glimmering architectural details of churches he photographed in Rome. The intersection of these images, while visually seductive, subtly comments on the Catholic Church’s mission in West Africa, and the commodification of black bodies dating to the slave trade.