Cost of Living incorporates a large-scale wood assemblage, mixed-media installations, found objects, and paintings. Every material in this exhibition holds a specific legacy of the lands and communities it has encountered. Azzuz sources, repurposes, and recontextualizes these materials to reveal their meanings with care and intention.

Azzuz constructed the large assemblage wall, titled Shared Memories, from wood he found throughout Bayview–Hunters Point where his studio is located. As one of the neighborhoods in San Francisco actively fighting gentrification, Bayview–Hunters Point represents strength and resilience. Security cameras installed above highlight the surveillance and policing of unhoused communities. Elsewhere in the exhibition, zip tie handcuffs and a prototype police robot dog highlight how state resources are used for criminalization rather than care.

Azzuz’s paintings honor the plant life indigenous to the Dogpatch neighborhood. He researched species that are either dormant, or starting to go extinct, because the marshland ecosystems supporting them have been destroyed.

He also incorporates traditional Yurok geometric motifs that reference animal life, such as snakes and frogs. These patterns often frame a stylized landscape. Azzuz paints directly onto unprimed canvas, saturating both the front and back of the raw material with acrylic pigments. Referencing varied histories of abstraction, Azzuz creates atmospheric layers of plants, water, mountains, and weather events.