10 Jul 2021 – 23 Dec 2022
Oscar Murillo, installation view: Violent Amnesia, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 9 April – 23 June 2019 © the artist. Courtesy the artist, Kettle’s Yard and David Zwirner. Photo: Jack Hems
Oscar Murillo, installation view: Violent Amnesia, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 9 April – 23 June 2019 © the artist. Courtesy the artist, Kettle’s Yard and David Zwirner. Photo: Jack Hems
Oscar Murillo’s art is concerned with social injustice, migration and the effects of globalisation. Besides painting, sculptural installation and performance, his practice includes collaborative projects with communities across the world. Begun in Colombia in 2013, his ongoing, worldwide school project, Frequencies, engages children in unmediated, unrestricted drawing and mark-making, resulting in visual journals mirroring their lives. Murillo’s own work contains a powerful element of theatre. He frequently uses unstretched, blackened canvases as flags, blackout curtains, room dividers, or heaps them, scrumpled, on the floor. His sculptural interventions and actions often include life-size papier-mâché figures embodying working men and women, based on traditional Colombian mateos effigies.
Oscar Murillo (born 1986, La Paila, Colombia) lives and works in various locations. Murillo studied at the Royal College of Art and University of Westminster, both London.
Oscar Murillo, The Institute of Reconciliation, 2019. Installation view: Violent Amnesia, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 9 April – 23 June 2019 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Kettle’s Yard. Photo: Matthew Hollow
My work’s been embedded in social discourse for as long as I can remember.
– Oscar Murillo
Oscar Murillo, Frequencies, 2013-ongoing © the artist. Courtesy the artist and Frequencies Foundation. Photo: Nicolas Nazari
Oscar Murillo, installation view: Collision/Coalition, The Shed, New York, USA, 19 June – 25 August 2019 © the artist. Courtesy the artist and The Shed. Photo: Stan Narten