JOERILEY.WORK
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Joe Riley is an artist, historian, and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego Visual Arts in a joint environmental research program with Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.Â
Joe’s research has recently been supported by the Getty Scholars Program, a UCSD Rita L. Atkinson Fellowship, and the UC Humanities Research Institute. His dissertation, Fixing the Sea: Case Studies Toward A Critical Environmental History of Ocean Art and Science since 1970, foregrounds and critically examines histories and practices of interaction between artists, oceanographers, and marine life situated within California’s university-military-research complex.
From 2020-2025 Joe has been a participating artist and co-curator for the Pacific Standard Time exhibition Embodied Pacific, featuring projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in Southern California and the Pacific Islands.Â
Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Joe holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and has taught at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, Stevens Institute of Technology, and The Cooper Union. CV (2025-26)
Education
Ph.D. Candidate, Art History & Art Practice, UC San Diego Visual ArtsÂ
2019-present [degree expected June 2025]
Program for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research, Center for Marine Biodiversity & Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
2020-present
[degree concentration expected June 2025]
Whitney Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum of American Art
2016-17
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, School of Art, BFA
2009-13
Positions
Getty Residential Scholar, Getty Center, Los Angeles
2025-26
Lecturer, Cal State San Marcos
2023-24
Associate Instructor, UC San Diego
2023, 2025
Graduate Student Co-Coordinator, UCSD Nature, Space, & Politics
2023
Adjunct Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
2018-19
Adjunct Instructor,
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
2014-19Â
Fellowships & AwardsGetty Residential Fellowship, Getty Center, Los Angeles
2025-26
Rita L. Atkinson Graduate Fellowship, UC San Diego
2025-26
Friends of the International Center Endowed Fellowship, Ruth Newmark Award, UC San Diego
2025-26
Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts Fellowship, UC San Diego
2024-25
Russell Grant, Visual Arts Department, UC San Diego
2024-25
Climate Action Training & Dissertation Fellowship, UC Humanities Research Institute
2024
Summer Institute in Environmental Humanities Fellowship, Colby College, Maine
2024
Freida Daum Urey Fellowship, UC San Diego
2023-24
Kenneth & Dorothy Hill Research Fellowship, UC San Diego
2023-24
Getty Research Library Grant Recipient, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA
2023
International Institute Graduate Research and Travel Grant, UC San Diego
2022-23
Graduate Student Fellow, “Institutional Failure as Global Leadership,” UC Humanities Research Institute
2022
Institute for Practical Ethics Graduate Student Fellowship, UC San Diego
2021-22
Ocean Fellow, TBA21-Academy Ocean Space, Venice, Italy
2020
Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, Los Angeles, CA
2020
Competitive EDGE Fellowship, UC San Diego
2019
Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship, New York
2018
Interdisciplinary Art & Theory Program Fellow, New York
2018-19
Art & Law Program Fellow, New York
2017
Service to the School Award, Cooper Union School of Art
2013
Exhibitions & Residencies In Plain View: Transforming Freshkills from Landfill to Landscape, Aronson Gallery, Parsons School of Design, New York
2025
Artist-in-Residence aboard R/V Sally Ride Research Cruise,
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD
2025
Embodied Pacific: Ocean Unseen, Getty Pacific Standard Time Exhibition, UCSD & Birch Aquarium at Scripps
2024
Social Sediment, group show curated by Dane Nakayama and gene aguilar magaña, New Wight Gallery, UCLA
2024
Fruiting Bodies, participating artist with Futurefarmers, group exhibition curated by Sam Rauch, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
2022
The Mothership Artists Residency, Yto Barrada & ArtAngel, Tangier, Morocco
2022Â
A World Without Us, Art Practice Ph.D. Student & Candidate Exhibition, Visual Arts Facility Commons Gallery, UCSD
2021
Climate Changing: On Artists, Institutions, and the Social Environment, participating artist with Futurefarmers, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
2021
2020 Into the Ground: LA, Clockshop, The Bowtie Project, Los Angeles
2020
Conferences & Symposia
Keynote: “Ocean Art Practice & Critical Environmental History: Visualizing Algae & Ballast as Passengers of Change,” Blue Visions: Thinking with Ocean Ecologies across the Arts and Humanities, Center for Environmental Futures, Oregon Humanities Center, University of Oregon.
2025
Displacement & Reparation: Climate, Labor, & Migration Justice Symposium, co-organizer and panelist, presented by UCSD Nature, Space, and Politics.
2025
“Ocean Art History and Critical Infrastructure Studies: Visualizing Liquid Ballast,” IN THE BURROW: Critical Approaches to Infrastructure, UC Irvine.
2024
Ocean Art History and Critical Ecological Practice: Visualizing Algae as a Passenger of Change, Getty Graduate Symposium, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
2024
“Passengers of Change: Co-laboratories for Ocean Art & Science,” When Species Travel Panel, organized by Jonathan Galka and Anthony Medrano, Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) Meeting, Honolulu, HI.
2023
Horizon Seaweed panel and workshop; co-sponsored by UCSD Nature, Space & Politics Group and Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.
2023Â
Beall Center Art + Ecologies Series: Ocean Research-Creation Panel; Organized by Lauren Lees and Raechel Jasmine Hill; Moderated by Jesse Colin Jackson; Sponsored by UCI Illuminations
2022
“Canoes, Conservation, and Computation,” Getty PST Ocean Prototype Nights Panel, UCSD Design Lab,San Diego, CA.
2021
“Tracing Intertidal Media through the Development of Early Photography,” Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Conference: The Production of Space and its Interdisciplinary Study.
2021
“The Engima Of Waves,” part of Soluble Geographies of the Equatorial Pacific, contributor and panelist, TBA-21 Academy Ocean Space.
2020
Introductory notes and facilitation for Finding Perspective: Looking through the waters of the North Atlantic, contributor and panelist, TBA-21 Academy Ocean Space.
2020
Conversation with Yto Barrada and Omar Berrada, Mnemonic Ocean: Monsoons, Memory, and Atlantic Movements, contributor and panelist, TBA-21 Academy Ocean Space.
2020
Last Updated 05.25.2025 SELECTED WORK(S)
Passengers of Change: Ballast Bench
2024
20’ x 20’ x 10’
steel, rocks, digital collage, ballast water, paint, seaweed
Birch Aquarium, San Diego
Somewhere between a marine science laboratory bench, a rocking chair, a waterbed, and the hold of a cargo ship, Ballast Bench, is a key element of the project Passengers of Change.
Passengers of Change
2024
20’ x 20’ x 10’
steel, rocks, digital collage, ballast water, paint, seaweed
Birch Aquarium, San Diego
Taking Undaria pinnatifida (wakame) as a framework for critique of the characterization of species, human and nonhuman, as “non-native” and “invasive,” scientist Danielle McHaskell, artist/writer Joe Riley, and artist Audrey Snyder explore the hydropolitical ecology odistributed seaweed Undaria pinnatifida.
Managed Retreat No. 1
2024
steel, stone, paint, tires
15” x 16” x 52”
Managed Retreat is a sculptural meditation on current frameworks for moving human infrastructures and settlements away from coastal areas in response to a complex of climate-related crises.
Passengers of Change: Ballast Stools
2024
15” x 15” x 18”
steel, rocks, plywood, laminate
Three stools for the Passengers of Change: Ballast Bench project and installation
Into the Ground: Wastestreams & Fieldwork
2018
Steel, canvas, rust
16’ x 7’ x 5.5’
Socrates Sculpture Park, New York
Joe Riley & Audrey Snyder’s collaborative sculpture, Into the Ground, reflects on how
urban ecologies uptake and transform contaminants,and how collective bodies realize
agency through ground-up organizing.Â
Into the Ground: LA River2019
Steel, canvas, rust
16’ x 7’ x 5.5’
Bowtie Project, Clockshop, Los Angeles
Wastestreaming
2018
digital photography, collage, animation, shovels, printed textÂ
Joe Riley and Audrey Snyder identified ninety seven transfer and destination sites for NYC solid waste and recycling material. In 2017-18 they traveled to forty six of these sites, in an effort to trace connectivity between urban and rural concourses in the chain of removal and dispersion of waste: a navigation of the wastestream. The artists composed photographic and stop-animation portraits for each of these interchanges of the waste network.
The Enigma Of
2017
6’x 6’x 8’
Foam, fiberglass, mirror, PVC pipe, water pump, and essayÂ
Two surfboards shaped after a c.1950 hydraulic economic model of a capitalist economic system. The work maps the history of surfing – a complex register of colonialism, military and domestic industry, masculinity, counter and mainstream culture, and the contested space of the shore – against the deployment of marine metaphors as descriptors of capital.Â
Rail Sail
2016
Vehicle, video, social sculpture
A wind-powered railroad vehicle connects urban and rural concourses, guided by chance and desire rather than reason or economy.
Parallel Cases
2012
letterpress, railbike, abandoned railroad Â
In the summer of 2012, collaborators Joe Riley and Audrey Snyder travelled atop abandoned railroads throughout California and Oregon (USA) on a pair of railbikes. Using a small letterpress, some ink, type, and paper they recorded their journey and exploration of two concurrent histories: the demise of railroad infrastructure and the cultural and technological shifts in commercial printing.