Chong's Monochromatic Still Lifes are born from the photo-montage and layering of images to pursue new meaning and objectivity from fractured histories to inform new significance and means of existence.
Working in the mediums of photography, installation and sculpture Chong investigates spirituality, race, and identity. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1958, he is of Chinese and Afro-Jamaican parents. He immigrated to the United States in 1977 at 19, where he lived in Brooklyn, and attended the School of Visual Arts, receiving a BFA with Honors in 1981. He then went on to attend the University of California in San Diego, where he received his MFA in 1991, later accepting a faculty appointment at the University of Colorado at Boulder the same year.
He has been awarded the Individual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1992, a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography, and the Pollock Krasner Grant, both in 1998.
