Josh Azzarella
Josh Azzarella’s multidisciplinary practice, which includes videos, objects, and photographs, explores the power of authorship in shaping collective memory. The works address broader postmodern debates on the nature of reality. His research-based practice continually adopts new media methods such as artificial intelligence, while reexamining and adapting historical methods of reproduction, employing such diverse technologies as electromagnetic levitation and custom lathe-cut records.
Scholarly discourse acknowledges Azzarella’s work for challenging the evidentiary capacity of the image. His work has been written about in Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and publications such as Visual Ethics (Routledge, 2018). Critic Shana Nys Dambrot asserts “[the] work is about the very nature of memory, attention, and experience themselves."
His work is included in the permanent collections of SFMoMA, MFA Houston, and LACMA, among others. He has collaborated with Teddy Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra and had solo exhibitions at Indiana University and City Gallery Wellington in New Zealand.
Select Exhibitions and Presentations
- “Fear of Electric Light,” Barr Gallery, Indiana University, New Albany, IN, 2023.
- “Triple Feature,” City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, 2022.
- “Craft as a Tool for Activism,” Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, CA, 2021
Select Awards and Grants
- 2006 — Emerging Artist Award, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
- 2003 — Fassbender Award for Excellence in Photography