Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Oscar Murillo artist

Artist Oscar Murillo was born in La Paila, Colombia in 1986, where he spent his early childhood. At the age of 10, his family relocated to London where he subsequently received his education in the arts. Through his varied oeuvre, which has an international reputation, Murillo explores issue of globalisation, migration, labour, and cultural identity, often employing a collaborative approach. Murillo was awarded the Turner Prize in 2019, when all four nominees were jointly and equally recognised and he held a solo presentation in the Tate Turbine Hall in 2024.

Born: 1986 La Paila, Colombia

Year of Migration to the UK: 1996


Biography

Artist Oscar Murillo was born in 1986 in La Paila, Colombia and spent this early childhood there. At the age of 10, his family relocated to London, where he attended Cardinal Pole Catholic School in Hackney. Reflecting on his experience of moving as a child, he remarked: ‘It was a trauma. If you imagine a mango tree getting uprooted from the most beautiful tropical place, and this soil where anything grows… […] If you remove that tree and you bring it here to London, and you try and replant that tree – even though you have the most beautiful parks – it’s just not going to grow,’ (Murillo quoted in Lewis, The Guardian, 2023). In 2007, he completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Art at the University of Westminster. Following his undergraduate studies, he took up a teaching position at a secondary school. In 2012, he earned an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in London. Until 2013, when one of his paintings sold for $401,000 at a New York auction (with the estimated value being $30,000) he also worked as a cleaner and an art installer for local galleries in East London.

Murillo’s oeuvre includes painting, works on paper, sculpture, installation, video, performance, action, and collaborative art initiatives, all characterised by a diverse array of materials, from clay and corn to metal constructions. Issue of globalisation, migration, labour, and cultural identity are his primary interest. The expressive qualities of his work, especially those in two dimensions, and the striking and vigorous interplay of colour, line, and material, have drawn comparisons to figures such as Alberto Burri, Philip Guston, and the American Abstract Expressionists. Central to Murillo’s practice is an enduring exploration of cultural exchange and the complex ways in which physical objects, as well as language and concepts, move, transform, and blend across different contexts. In this context, his Colombian heritage and upbringing in England significantly inform his work. The environments where Murillo works serve as an intrinsic element of his studio-based creations, rooting his practice firmly in its physical and cultural surroundings. Additionally, themes of postcolonial critique and socioeconomic inequalities resonate throughout his projects, providing a lens on global disparities and a critique of capitalism.

Murillo regularly exhibits in the UK and internationally, often participating in leading global shows. One of his most successful projects and artworks is Frequencies. This initiative, developed with input from the artist’s relatives, studio staff, and global collaborators, involved placing canvases on desks in classrooms across various countries. Schoolchildren aged ten to sixteen were encouraged to engage creatively by leaving their own marks, whether through sketches, written expressions, or casual doodles. In 2015, Frequencies featured at the 56th Venice Biennale All the World’s Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor, a Nigerian-born, Germany-based curator. The presentation of the work was collaborative and interactive, with Biennale staff handling the canvases and retrieving them from drawers to display to the public, which made it a piece constantly in motion. The project was later showcased in 2016 at two other major exhibitions: the 2nd Hangzhou Triennial of Fibre Art in China and the 3rd Aichi Triennale in Japan, themed Homo Faber: A Rainbow Caravan. Frequencies was subsequently exhibited in numerous other venues, including the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England in 2019. Another piece that exemplifies his critique of capitalism and systems of oppression is a 2014 performance in a New York gallery, where he invited Colombian factory workers to carry out labour as part of the artwork. That same year, during a residency in a collector’s home in Rio de Janeiro, he worked with the domestic staff, with the white overalls bearing marks of his labour being the final piece. In 2024 Murillo presented a solo installation, The Flooded Garden, in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.

In 2019, he shared the Turner Prize with his fellow nominees, Tai Shani, Helen Cammock (who is of Jamaican descent) and the Jordanian-born Lawrence Abu Hamdan, after they collectively requested that the jury, for the first time, recognise all four artists equally. In 2023, Murillo received an honorary doctorate from the University of Westminster, where he had previously studied. Murillo is represented by several galleries, including Carlos Ishikawa in London and David Zwirner (London, New York, Paris, Hong Kong). During the Covid-19 pandemic, Oscar Murillo moved to his hometown of La Paila but now continues to live and work in different places around the world. His works are part of several public collections in the UK, including the Arts Council Collection, Kettle’s Yard at the University of Cambridge, and Tate.

Related books

  • Clara Dublanc, ed., Oscar Murillo: By Means of a Detour (Cambridge: Kettle's Yard/University of Cambridge, 2021)
  • Victor Wang, Oscar Murillo: the Build-up of Content and Information (New York: David Zwirner Books, 2018)
  • Anna Schneider, Emma Enderby and María Belén Sáez de Ibarra, Oscar Murillo (München: Stiftung Haus der Kunst, 2017)
  • Clara Dublanc, Oscar Murillo (New York: David Zwirner Books 2016)
  • Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Liam Gillick and Nicola Lees, Oscar Murillo: Work (Miami: Rubell Family Collection, 2012)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Royal College of Art (student)
  • Turner Prize (joint winner)
  • University of Westminster (student)
  • Venice Biennale (exhibitor)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Oscar Murillo: The Flooded Garden (solo installation), Tate Modern/Turbine Hall, London (2024)
  • Oscar Murillo: THEM (solo exhibition), Gagosian Burlington Arcade, London (2024)
  • The Reason for Painting (group show), MEAD Gallery, University of Warwick, Warwick (2023)
  • TESTAMENT (group show), Goldsmiths CCA, London (2022)
  • Oscar Murillo: Frequencies (solo exhibition), Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton (2019)
  • 2nd Hangzhou Triennial of Fibre Art (group show), Hangzhou (2016)
  • Homo Faber: A Rainbow Caravan (group show), 3rd Aichi Triennale, Aichi Prefecture (2016)
  • All the World’s Futures (group show), 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015)
  • Oscar Murillo: A Mercantile Novel (solo exhibition), David Zwirner, New York (2014)
  • Oscar Murillo: The Cleaners’ Late Summer Party with Comme des Garçons (solo exhibition), Park Nights, Serpentine Gallery (2012)
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Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Oscar Murillo]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Oscar Murillo] in the Ben Uri Library