In this episode of A brush with..., Ben Luke talks to the British Colombian artist Oscar Murillo about the defining cultural experiences and influences of his life. Born in La Paila, Colombia in 1986, Murillo lives between Colombia and London. He studied art first at the University of Westminster and then at the Royal College of Art, both in London. Murillo first shot to fame in the art world with paintings that attracted huge attention in 2013—canvases with loose, scratchy, expressive marks, patches of pure colour, and daily dust and grime from the studio, scrawled with words such as "burrito", "yuka" and "chorizo". But he has also consistently made works in sculpture, installation, performance and film.
At the heart of his work is an engagement with language, with the nature of labour and production, with the movement of people and with fluid cultural identities. In this interview he discusses his major project Frequencies, in which children from more than 350 schools in 34 countries across the world were sent canvases that were affixed to desks, so that children could draw and write on them, consciously or unconsciously, over several months—and how the project relates to his own work.
Murillo talks about his ongoing interest in class as well as race, in relation to his Colombian background. He picks out the artists and musicians that have most influenced him, such as Picasso and Jean Dubuffet, and discusses his admiration of the work of late Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor. And he answers the questions we ask all our guests: what are the essential rituals in his working life? If he could live with just one work of art, what would it be? And what is art for?