Joy Ray is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and researcher who lives and works in Los Angeles. Ray uses installation, textiles, and digital media to investigate notions of subtext—the palpable presence of the unknown, unseen, redacted, illegible, and haunted. Central to Ray’s research into the unknowable are methods of abstraction, concealment, illumination, and reconstitution that extract visual language from archival texts. Ray’s research-based installations activate the poetics of archival material, bringing ghosts to life.
Joy Ray’s work has been featured at Hauser & Wirth (NY, 2025), the MCA (Chicago, IL, 2025), the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University (NY, 2025), BravinLee (NY, 2024), Patricia Sweetow (LA, 2024), the Museum of Art and History (Lancaster, CA, 2023), the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum (Honolulu, 2020), and the Museum of Quilts and Textiles (San Jose, CA, 2018). Ray’s work has been recognized with prestigious residencies, including Vermont Studio Center (Full Fellowship, 2025), Ragdale (2025), and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2025). Ray’s practice and exhibitions have been featured in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, Harper’s Magazine, Colossal, Art Spiel, LA Weekly, Artillery, Riot Material, Il Mattino, and whitehot. Joy Ray holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College.