Photo courtesy by Mikey Mosher

josephjosuemora@gmail.com

IG: @josephjosuemora CV

As a multidisciplinary artist and gallery worker with a politicized identity, I highlight issues related to immigration, labor, and social disenfranchisement. I see similarities between the bureaucratic systems and spaces I move through: the nuances of surveillance, erasure, and unseen labor. Through my practice, I track the mundaneness of art preparators through labor, material research, and archiving.

By identifying gestures in my art-making process, such as removing tape after painting a gallery wall or pushing joint compound through drywall, I fossilize the unseen labor of an art preparator. These actions help me relate to the unseen labor and systems of undocumented immigrants who support the operations of many industries in the US. Drawing on historical moments that have shaped the country's current immigration crisis, as well as my own lived experience, my work grapples with questions of loss and care.

I use reduction and minimalism to depict loss and absence. I interpret rest and exhaustion imposed by capitalist cycles through the impressions objects leave and the actions they take. Through my titles and text-based artworks, I offer the audience a glimpse of my internalized monologue of anxiety, fear, and depression caused by systemic pressures that constantly surveil me and others in our current sociopolitical landscape and throughout history.

Photo courtesy by Mikey Mosher

Joseph Josué Mora is a Mexican-born, Chicago-raised multidisciplinary artist. He has exhibited at the Chicago Latinx Art Now Biennial (2016), National Museum of Mexican Art (2018 and 2023), Indiana University Northwest, Cleve Carney Art Gallery, and in a solo exhibition titled Clearance at the Chicago Art Department in 2019. He was selected as one of eight Breakout Artists of 2022 in Newcity Chicago Magazine and was featured in the accompanying exhibition at the Chicago Artists Coalition. In May 2022, Mora created a temporary graphite mural titled Needed, But Not Wanted (In Masses), through Mind Map, a bimonthly program at MANA Contemporary Chicago. He was selected for the Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program in 2023and was featured in the accompanying exhibition, Beneath The Visible. He presented his fourth solo exhibition, Condition Report at Yes Project Space in 2024. Mora is the recipient of the Illinois Arts Council's Creative Accelerator Fund, the Yollocalli Artist Fund for Alumni, and the Caxton Club Grant. His work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. 

In addition to his studio practice, Mora has experience working in galleries as an art preparator and, most recently, as Assistant Director of Exhibitions and Staff Advisor for SITE Galleries and INCUBATOR at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where he worked between 2021 and 2025 and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2018. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Art, Theory, and Practice Department at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.