JOERILEY.WORK





joriley@ucsd.edu
@pleasedontfront
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Photo: Natalie Conn

 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. 

  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. 

  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.
Radio Chain
2014
performance, pirate radio
Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives, Kyiv,Ukraine
Radio Chain was a performative mobile installation created in October 2014 as part of the Izolyatsia Platform for Cultural Initiatives project “ZAHOPLENNYA”. A chain of participants were connected by individual radio units built by the artist which receive and re-transmit a broadcast from one unit to the next. During the performance, participants passed through the city connected only by radio waves, navigating their route based on the clarity of signal reception, and physically extending the reach of the broadcast. The broadcast content consisted of interviews with Ukrainian soldiers conducted by artists Yulia Kostereva, Yuri Kruchak, and journalist Maria Prokpneko.