Josué Morales Urbina: Migration, Memory & Installation Art at ART150

Migration, Memory & Installation Art at ART150

Josué Morales Urbina is a Guatemalan-born installation artist whose practice centers on the spatial and emotional geography of migration, memory, and what he describes as transcultural displacement—the layered experience of belonging simultaneously to multiple places and cultures while feeling at home in none. Based in and working from the vibrant artist community at 150 Bay Street, Morales Urbina creates immersive installations that transform ordinary materials—drinking straws, coffee, discarded objects—into profound meditations on identity, loss, and the possibility of building meaning from fragments.

About Josué Morales Urbina

Josué Morales Urbina works at the intersection of autobiography and collective experience, creating installations that speak to universal themes of migration, cultural identity, and the persistence of memory. Originally from Guatemala, he spent years living across the United States before relocating to—a journey that became foundational to his artistic voice. His practice asks essential questions about what it means to carry culture across borders, to maintain connection to a place one has left, and to forge identity in the spaces between cultures.

Working primarily in installation, Morales Urbina is known for his sophisticated use of everyday materials—straws, coffee beans, textiles, found objects—which he accumulates, orders, and transforms through meticulous repetition. Rather than imposing a single narrative onto these materials, he allows them to suggest multiple readings: architectural systems, maps, networks of migration, the invisible scaffolding of identity itself. Each installation is both deeply personal and universally resonant, inviting viewers to recognize their own experiences of displacement, belonging, and memory within the work.

His connection to ART150 at 150 Bay Street in Jersey City has become central to his practice. The artist community there—itself a microcosm of cultural diversity and shared creative exploration—provides both a studio space and a philosophical home, a place where themes of community, migration, and cultural exchange are lived daily.

The Conversation

In this episode of Tarik Talk, artist and host sits down with Josué Morales Urbina in the heart of —a creative hub in Downtown where some of the most innovative contemporary art in the region is being made. The conversation moves fluidly between the personal and the philosophical, exploring Morales Urbina’s creative process, the conceptual frameworks driving his installations, and what it means to make art about migration and memory in a city as richly layered and diverse as Jersey City.

They discuss his Guatemalan heritage and the emotional weight of cultural displacement—the particular experience of moving between countries and the ways that movement marks an artist’s sensibility. Morales Urbina reflects on stepping away from art for nearly a decade, and what it meant to return to the studio carrying a lifetime of memories, experiences, and cultural transitions. He speaks candidly about his relationship with materials, his obsession with memory as both subject and creative fuel, and the role of chance and intuition in his artistic practice.

The conversation also touches on the contemporary art scene in Jersey City and the broader New York/New Jersey region—how ART150 and similar spaces serve as creative sanctuaries, and how being embedded in a diverse community of artists from around the world directly influences the work being made there. Through it all, Morales Urbina’s voice remains warm, reflective, and profoundly human—offering listeners insight into the life and mind of an artist working to transform personal experience into shared meaning.

Themes Explored

Our conversation with Josué Morales Urbina covers the full spectrum of his artistic thinking—from the deeply personal to the broadly political, from the material specificity of straws and coffee to the vast emotional landscape of belonging and displacement. Discover the stories of and cultural voices shaping the contemporary art world on Tarik Talk.

• Migration and transcultural displacement—the experience of living between cultures and the creative possibilities that emerge from that in-between space
• Memory as material—how sensory memories (the smell of fruit, the taste of coffee, childhood play) become the building blocks for large-scale installations
• Identity and cultural belonging—navigating what it means to maintain connection to a place left behind while building a new home in the present
• ART150 and the Jersey City art community—how shared creative spaces foster dialogue and contribute to the cultural landscape of the region
• The intersection of the personal and the political—using installation art to speak to broader questions of migration, community, and human connection

About ART150

ART150 at 150 Bay Street in Jersey City is one of the region’s most vital creative communities—a multi-studio artist collective in the heart of Downtown Jersey City where painters, sculptors, installation artists, and multidisciplinary practitioners from around the world maintain studios and collaborate. The space itself embodies the themes central to Josué Morales Urbina’s work: cultural exchange, creative dialogue across difference, the building of community from individual visions, and the transformation of industrial space into a beacon for contemporary art. It is here that Morales Urbina continues his investigations into memory, materiality, and the human experience of migration and belonging.

Listen to Tarik Talk with Josué Morales Urbina

Listen to the full Tarik Talk conversation with Josué Morales Urbina on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform. Discover the stories behind his installations, the creative journey from Guatemala to Jersey City, and the philosophical frameworks guiding contemporary art that speaks to our shared human experience of migration, memory, and belonging.

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