The Ferguson and LA Protest series were exhibited as part of Run Up, a solo exhibition of Gonzales-Day’s work at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. The exhibition included a short film entitled Run Up, and restaged period imagery from a reenactment of a lynching from California’s turbulent past that was restaged for the camera.
The film and reenactment were pared with photographs taken in Los Angeles during the protests and marches that took place in the days following the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the white police Officer involved in the shooting death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teen that became a focal point for many in the Black Lives Matter movement. A second series of images record Ferguson, MO in the aftermath of the shooting and reveal a temporary memorial for Brown, as well as buildings damaged during the protests that followed the shooting, throughout the city of Ferguson, and document a small memorial honoring Ezell Ford, a mentally ill young man that was shot and killed by police in South Los Angeles. In combining these specially and temporally distant events, the exhibition sought to draw parallels between the history of lynching and police shootings today.
