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, and rubber bands.

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, Morales 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.”

Among Morales Urbina’s achievements as an artist, are solo and group exhibitions in New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas. A Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alum, he's undertaken artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Résidence d'artiste internationale from La Napoule Art Foundation, Centrum residencies in Washington state, GoggleWorks, Byrdcliffe Arts Colony and secured the 2023 New Jersey State Council on the Arts - Sculpture Finalist Award, most recently awarded the 2024 Jersey City Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Morales Urbina holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at San Antonio, supplemented by a minor in Art History and Criticism.