Oscar Murillo talks to Ben Luke about the defining cultural experiences and influences of his life. Oscar 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. 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. He 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, discusses the dual influence of La Paila, the village in Colombia in which he grew up, and London, to which he emigrated when he was 11 and made his career in art. 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? This episode is sponsored by ARTIKA.

Links for this episode:

Oscar Murillo at David Zwirner

Frequencies, presented by Artangel, until the 30 August 2021

By Means of a Detour, a book co-published by Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge and the Kunstverein in Hamburg

Jannis Kounellis at Cheim & Read

David Hammons at MoMA

Monet’s Water-Lilies at l’Orangerie in Paris and Murillo’s Surge paintings, made partly in response

Hans Haacke’s Der Pralinenmeister (The Chocolate Master)

Our podcast, A brush with… Julie Mehretu

Fela Kuti on Spotify and his song VIP (Vagabonds in Power)

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