Based in the New York Metropolitan area, Josué Morales Urbina is an award-winning installation and sculpture artist, whose work primarily explores transcultural displacement and dépaysement. Among frequent themes that arise in his art are a pervading sense of foreignness and the impermanence of memory, which he examines via contemplative abstract installations. These works are composed of a broad range of materials, including ordinary household objects such as, drinking straws, coffee beans, toasted white bread, rubber bands, and edible materials.

The questions of foreignness in Morales Urbina’s work are rooted in his being born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and having lived across the United States as a “third culture kid” (an individual raised in a culture other than their parents'). Yet, as much as he creates to engage audiences in such explorations, Urbina’s artmaking has also afforded him the self-discovery that he, ultimately, creates art “to build a home for myself; my art practice is my home.”

Morales Urbina’s career is marked by numerous accomplishments, including solo and group exhibitions in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Oregon, and Texas. An alum of the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, he has completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, La Napoule Art Foundation’s Résidence d'Artiste Internationale, Centrum in Washington state, GoggleWorks, Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, NARS International AIR, SVA Artist Residency Program, ChaNorth, and a current Textile Arts Center’s TAC AIR 16. In 2023, he was recognized as a Sculpture Finalist by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was awarded the 2024 Jersey City Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Morales Urbina has also served as a panelist for various residencies and grants. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Art History and Criticism from the University of Texas at San Antonio.