Justin Watson (CV)

Justin Watson (b. 1984, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA) deconstructs new media technologies to explore post-internet identity, artificial intelligence, environment, trauma, and how the underlying social psychology of these systems intersect with online and offline culture. He received his MFA in Sculpture Intermedia from the University of Utah in 2016. Watson's exhibitions include the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, The Wrong Bienniale (São Paulo, Brazil), Central Utah Art Center (CUAC), Bountiful Davis Art Center (BDAC), Finch Lane Gallery, and NOX Contemporary.

Artist Statement

My work emerges through physical and digital practices exploring post-Anthropocene, Hauntology, geopolitical presence, cataclysm and the sinister subtexts to humankind’s search for utopic transcendence.

I spend days drifting through digital mausoleums searching for words or ideas that have calcified and could use a critically analyzed resurrection. History is cyclical. Antiquated ideas are forged in the hearths of the malcontent; compassion becomes an epitaph carved into the ever-growing machine labeled progress all the while our very existence is imperiled by the systems of our design.