The work of Albert Chong, artist and faculty member at the University of Colorado Boulder, is on display in the Emmanuel Art Gallery through March 18, 2026. The show includes a collection of photographs, photomosaics, photomontages, and installations. Illuminations & Ruminations represents the largest collection of Chong’s work that has been displayed in a solo exhibition in Colorado to date. 

The title of the exhibition, “Illuminations & Ruminations” refers to Chong’s creative process. Chong describes illumination as “when the lights go on in your head and the dark places of your consciousness is illuminated with the concept for a new work.” While “rumination is the act of pillaging one’s consciousness, psyche, memories and just as importantly the world around you for the materials with which to create something from nothing,” Chong writes. The collection on display in the Emmanuel represents a sample of work Chong has created since he moved to Colorado in 1991.

The son of Afro-Chinese Jamaican parents, Chong was born in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to the U.S. in 1977, when he was just 19 years old. He studied art at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California in San Diego. Moving to Boulder, Colorado in 1991, Chong took a position teaching photography at the University of Colorado. He has taught classes while creating his own art for the last 34 years. Chong says that while he has produced much art and appreciates the “ease and convenience of life” in Boulder, being away from his extended family and the artist peers he interacted with in New York City has been challenging. 

Chong uses images of ancestors, family members, and found portraits to create his iconic photomontages. Starting with a vintage photograph which serves as a backdrop, Chong constructs a still life assemblage, layering objects and, in some cases, other images on top. Sometimes the objects are things related to the family that would be used to memorialize the person in the photograph. Sometimes they are natural elements like skulls, bones, flowers, or seashells that serve as shamanic talismans and symbolic signifiers. Two of Chong’s family members show up repeatedly in Illuminations & Ruminations: Miss Peggy and Aunt Winnie. Two of the pieces in the exhibition feature “Aunt Lou,” Chong’s maternal grandmother. These pieces are particularly significant because they were made using the only surviving image of Aunt Lou, passed to Chong by his mother’s sister, Aunt Beryl. “Those old photos are receptacles of memory, proof of a long forgotten past that soon no one will recall,” Chong explains.

Chong’s hope for visitors to Illuminations & Ruminations is that they will be able to identify with the work on display. “I seek human connection with most of my works,” he explains. He hopes the experience of visiting the exhibition is like “discovering a book that you like and that gives you the impetus to want to read all the books by that writer.”

Albert Chong's International Reach

Chong has represented his home country Jamaica in many international biennials, national and international exhibitions, including the 2001 Venice Biennale, the 1998 Sao Paulo Biennale and the seventh Havana Biennial in Cuba in 2000. 

Chong’s work is currently included in the National Gallery of Art’s Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955 - 1985. This travelling exhibition opened in Washington D.C. in September 2025 and will be on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles starting in late February 2026, and then travels to the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi in July 2026.

Another exhibition titled Jamaican Portraits by Albert Chong is on display through March 28, 2026 at East Window in Boulder, Colorado.