Born in La Paila, Colombia in 1986, Oscar Murillo moved with his parents to London when he was 10 years old. He studied at Cardinal Pole Catholic School in Hackney between the ages of 11 and 18, before going to art school. His main studio is based in north-east London. Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, he has been closely involved in humanitarian work in Colombia.
Over the past decade, Murillo has become known for a practice that encompasses paintings, works on paper, sculptures, installations, actions, live events, collaborative projects, and videos. Taken as a whole, his work emphasises the many ways in which ideas, visual languages and everyday items are in a state of flux: displaced, in circulation, and intermingling.
Recent one-person exhibitions include ‘Horizontal Darkness in Search of Solidarity’ at Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany, 2019–2020, ‘Oscar Murillo’, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2017–2018, and at CAPC (Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts), Bordeaux, 2017. Murillo shared the 2019 Turner Prize alongside Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Tai Shani.