Harry Gamboa Jr. is an artist, author, and educator.
He is the founder and director of the international performance troupe, Virtual Vérité (2005-2017).
He is also a co-founder of Asco (1972-1985), the Los Angeles-based performance group.
He is Co-Director, Photo/Media Program, California Institute of the Arts.
His work has been exhibited/collected nationally/internationally: Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2020); Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (2019); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016, 2015 and 1995 Biennial); Centre d’Arts Plastiques Contemporain Bordeaux, France (2014); De Appel, Amsterdam (2014); Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England (2013); Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. (2013); Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, England (2013); Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2011, 1981); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2011, 2008, 2001); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2006); Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, Denmark (1996).
He is the author of Xoloitzcuintli Doppelgänger and other stories. His recent essays have appeared in Pfeil No. 10 (Hamburg), and Exploring Commonism A New Aesthetics of the Real (Antwerp). He is the author of Urban Exile: Collected Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr., edited by Chon A. Noriega, University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
The “Make Love Not War” bumper sticker on Harry Gamboa Jr.’s VW in 1970s East L.A. stood out against the police brutality his Chicano community experienced. One incident in particular left him bloodied and disoriented. He recounts the events that gave him the critical focus for his photographic artistic practice.
When a school is too punishing and racist to teach a child, how will he learn to read and write? Harry Gamboa Jr. shows us how.
