Josué Morales Urbina (Guatemalan, b. 1977) is a Guatemalan installation artist who has lived across the US, he lives and works in the New York metropolitan area, he works across various media, exploring transcultural displacement and memory. Morales Urbina earned a BFA from UTSA with a minor in art history and criticism, he is a 07’ Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni.
Statement:
As a creative individual born and raised in Guatemala and later nurtured in the US, I always encounter trans-cultural displacement (a feeling of being neither here nor there). Cultural identity is harder to digest when one works in a foreign ambiance. The fruitful aspects of nostalgia along with vivid childhood memories are the backbone of my work. The unorthodox materials and themes I use come about through introspective necessity. They embrace growth, childhood, memory, number (the individual vs. mass culture), addiction, and necrophobia. I feel that to produce legitimate work, one must execute from an intimate honest place. The public perceives that common denominator to be personal and yet global, no matter what visual language it is written in.