THE GHOST KINGDOM
2026
Cerritos Art Gallery, Norwalk CA
In 1979, psychologist Betty Jean Lifton coined the term “Ghost Kingdom” to describe the speculative inner worlds of adopted people, formed in response to institutional secrecy around their origins. In The Ghost Kingdom, Joy Ray—herself adopted—materializes this condition as a haunted archive. Working with personal archival material, textiles, found artifacts, and video, Ray frames adoption as a lived form of hauntology, continually unsettled by missing records and unknowable pasts.
Video by Eric Minh Swenson