is known for investigating the invisible through the visible, with a wide-reaching approach that spans image-making, sculpture, investigative journalism, writing, engineering, and numerous other disciplines.
The clandestine and the hidden are revealed in series such as The Black Sites, The Other Night Sky, and Limit Telephotography in which the limits of vision are explored through the histories of landscape photography, abstraction, Romanticism, and technology. Paglen’s investigation into the epistemology of representation can be seen in his Symbology and Code Names series which utilize text, video, object, and image to explore questions surrounding military culture and language. Among his chief concerns are learning how to see the historical moment we live in and developing the means to imagine alternative futures.
Paglen has had numerous solo exhibitions held at institutions globally, including at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. (2018–19), which traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California (2019); Barbican Centre, London (2019–20); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2020–21); San José Museum of Art, California (2021); and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2023), among others. He has participated in group exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009, 2010, 2018); Tate Modern, London (2010); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2011); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2014); Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2026); and Kunsthaus Hamburg, Germany (2025), and numerous other institutions. He is included in the forthcoming group exhibitions, Histories of Ecology at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, opening September 5, 2025; Bells and Cannons, which will open at the Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuanian, on October 16, 2025; and Task Eternal, which opens at Powerhouse Parramatta, Sydney, in September 2026.
In tandem with his museum exhibitions, Paglen is well-known for his site-specific public projects, among them, The Last Pictures (2013), an artwork containing a micro-etched disc with one hundred photographs sent into geostationary orbit around Earth via the communications satellite EchoStar XVI, produced in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT. In 2015, Paglen created Trinity Cube, a radioactive public sculpture made from material collected within the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan, and from Trinitite, the radioactive material made from molten sand after the testing of the Atomic Bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico. In addition, Paglen achieved critical acclaim for his contributed research and cinematography on the Academy Award-winning film Citizenfour (2014), directed by Laura Poitras. Paglen is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality. His work has been profiled in the The New York Times, Vice Magazine, The New Yorker, and Artforum. In 2014, Paglen received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award for his work as a “groundbreaking investigative artist,” and in 2017, he was the recipient of the MacArthur Genius award. Paglen is the Spring 2025 Leslie and Brad Bucher Artist-in-Residence at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, Houston, Texas. Paglen holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, an MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley.
