The Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River was held at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in the fall of 2017 as a part of Pacific Standard Time LA/LA.

Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River is a conceptually driven photographic project that manifests itself in two ways: first, as a literary trope of the frontier novel of the late nineteenth century and second, as a digitally constructed artifact whose material existence stood in for the historical absence of such texts. Not surprisingly, such novels often depicted Native and Latino inhabitants as ridiculous personages encountered on an otherwise naturalized conquest of the West. Bone-Grass Boy is their nemesis.

Bone-Grass Boy: The Secret Banks of the Conejos River (1993-1996 / 2017) was created as an artistic response to the heated debates that raged in the late 1980s and early 90s around AIDS, gay and transgender rights, immigration and the border, and multiculturalism—and directly addressed mixed racial identity—at a time when the work by Latinx artists were rarely exhibited or written about. This significant body of work established Gonzales-Day’s interest in uncovering missing histories in what can now be seen as his unique use of historical research and laid the groundwork for his future projects that include Searching for California Hang Trees, Erased Lynchings, and Profiled.

Here is an Except of the book pages from the installation at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in 2017 as a part of PST: LA/LA