Julio César Morales | My America
Overview
Photo by Renee Zellweger. Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
Photo by Renee Zellweger. Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.

Gallery Wendi Norris

436 Jackson Street, San Francisco

 

Gallery Wendi Norris presents My America, Julio César Morales’ sixth solo presentation with the gallery. Marking the artist’s homecoming to San Francisco after more than a decade in Arizona working as a senior curator and museum director, Morales returns full-time to his multidisciplinary artmaking practice that, over the last two decades, has explored migration, labor, and underground economies. My America coincides with his first career survey, OJO, at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, on view August 7 – December 1, 2025, underscoring a pivotal career moment and the impact of his deeply rooted and continually evolving practice.

 

 

ABOUT Julio césar morales

The artistic practice of Julio César Morales (b. 1966, Tijuana) employs a range of media and visual strategies to explore issues of migration, underground economies, and labor, on personal and global scales. He works by whatever means necessary: in a series of watercolor illustrations, Morales diagramed means of human trafficking in passenger vehicles, while in other projects he employed the DJ turntable, neon signs, the historical reenactment of a famous meal, or the conventions of an artist-run gallery to explore social interaction and political perspectives.

 

Morales’ artwork has been shown at venues internationally, including; the Lyon Biennale, France; Istanbul Biennale, Turkey; Los Angeles County Art Museum, Los Angeles; Singapore Biennale, Singapore; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany; Prospect 3, New Orleans; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Perez Art Museum, Miami; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Museo del Barrio, New York City; The UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, amongst others. His work is in private and public collections including MoMA, New York; The Los Angeles County Art Museum, Los Angeles; The Kadist Foundation, San Francisco and Paris; The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Deutsche Bank, Germany; and The Office of Art in Embassies. Morales has been written about in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, Art Nexus, and Art in America.