OSCAR MURILLO AND MODOU DIENG AT GOLDEN HOUR IN CHELSEA, NEW YORK
By Devon Van Houten Maldonado
Installation view of Cry of Victory and Short Walks to Freedom: You / Over You
Written in conjuction with the exhibition Cry of Victory and Short Walks to Freedom
MODOU DIENG: How does your work eradicate the discourse of capitalism?
OSCAR MURILLO: It doesn’t eradicate it. My work, maybe where there is a sort of junction or crossover or collision, is precisely in the conversation of strata, class, working class, capital and capital from the point of view of my practice and how it is connected to a consumerist, capitalist kind of agenda. Inevitably, too, you have an experience of race because of where I come from. But that experience of race does not trump or override my awareness of everything else, and also my awareness of solidarity horizontally speaking—
MD: Within a collective consciousness?
OM: Exactly. As you say, someone like you or I, we only have the ability to see ourselves as global citizens. I think that someone who is American, an American citizen, whether they’re black or whatever, gets lost in the complication of their own identity because of capital. It is precisely because of capital, because when I name the current separation of identity discourse that prevails in this country “fascist,” it is fascist because of capital. Here you have a country that runs on capitalism, that runs on a consumer appetite. So it fails to recognize anything else, even if the other is struggling or comes from a platform of struggle, it is not recognized because there is a lack of capital drive.
MD: Your work has a very strong sense of freedom: a freedom from painting as the medium, from a mainstream discourse and places. How do you build on that platform?
OM: How is freedom even achieved? I think it has to do with this strong sense of solidarity. And I think it’s also something that — here I’m speculating maybe — but it has to do with my upbringing in London, or let’s say Great Britain or the UK, as historically speaking the biggest imperial power. This conversation becomes really interesting. Let’s talk about white supremacism. In the context of the UK it is of course naturally capitalist because we have, they have, a super strong history of imperialism, which translates to capital. But in it, of course, there are monstrous atrocities and violent histories.
At the same time, given this distance, there has been a culture of, let’s say — I wouldn’t call it solidarity — but somewhat acceptance, whereby capitalism is not the prevailing conversation. In a way it is much more socialist, or pseudo socialist. That of course has shifted a lot. And also it is Europe that has had the very strong, traumatic recent history of the Second World War, and how that shifts and changes its psyche in relation to the future from the middle of the century until now. Of course, it’s changing now.
So living and growing up in that context, in a way, created a totally different amal- gamated human being that, also as a young child comes from the history, or grows up, in the culture of plantations of Colombia. That is very confusing but it is also at odds with itself. He has relationships to slavery. He has relationships to race and strata and working society. But as a young child you experience it as commonality. Because everybody in that village is poor. So you don’t feel a sense of difference. And also I’m young, therefore, of course, as you get older discrimination happens and you begin to become more aware. But then I jumped.
MD: You jumped?
OM: I mean like migrating. But also, in a way, in terms of jumping, too. Like you jump over something to a different context.
MD: In the act of jumping there is that sense of taking a risk.
OM: Yes, I wasn’t responsible for that. It was my father. He made that choice for us.
MD: So you went from the context of the barrio, plantation situation to a very rich context.
OM: I wouldn’t say very rich. I think culturally much more developed, fair.
MD: Yes, I didn’t mean rich versus poor. Because in your work I see — like, for example, the performance you did in Berlin — the context of growing up in Colombia in your hometown because of the organic nature of it and the way you execute it.
OM: Absolutely, and there’s a relationship to materiality. There’s a relationship to the organic. It’s kind of visceral also.
MD: In other works I really see the cosmopolitan influence in the sense that, it is contemporary art as we know it in cities like New York, Berlin — it is large-scale, powerful. How do you negotiate those angles?
OM: I think that one has to have a very nuanced and acute sensitivity. A sensitivity to space, to geographies, and it doesn’t mean that you fit in and that you succumb. Not like, “oh, this is what I should do because it will be acceptable in the right context.” I think very often you do precisely the opposite. To create the sense of a slight discomfort, to complicate things. And also there is a strong degree of antagonism. You make situations uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable.
There are numerous projects that suggest that discomfort. Like, for example, the factory, A Mercantile Model, presented in New York at David Zwirner Gallery, in which, through an installation or performative intervention, I was able to invite 20 people from where I grew up who are factory workers, cross generational individuals, and somehow create a situation of insurgency.
MD: What is your relationship to New York?
OM: My relationship to New York is one of understanding that the city gives a lot of energy, or has a lot of energy. That it is this kind of cradle of insatiable energy and kind of also perversity. It’s very perverse because it has no awareness of otherness. Even within itself. That is to say that it is a city that is incredibly stratified, but it does not care, you know. In that there is a tremendous freedom. While, perhaps, in a totally different context, it is extremely absurd that here in the city you have a streak of extreme wealth and also poverty. In its philosophy, it’s about the perversity of consum- erism, regardless of where you fit into that structure.
MD: You went to school in London, from Colombia, and still your work is totally a reflection of Americanness, in the sense that it connects more to American art than other parts of the world. Don’t you think?
OM: I don’t know. That’s interesting. Of course, I’ve been coming here over the last three years to make paintings. Particularly in the summer. I like the energy in the summer. It reminds me of a kind of, again, perverse utopia. Because it’s hot and it’s sexy and it’s dirty. It’s Latino also, incredibly so. So it’s kind of a utopian insistence of an urbanness that does not exist anywhere else in the world. But I think, at the same time, I also have an awareness of the orientalism. In that philosophy, it is about energy, about a kind of physical release, and I think a lot of [my] paintings or more formalized works do have that idea in them. I like to say, a more anarchic kind of energy. I could be completely wrong in my reading, but there is this kind of infusion of diversity and therefore, again going back to the idea of horizontality, I am able to maybe create associations beyond the, let’s say, incestuous New York existence. It does obviously tap into that too, without a doubt.
MD: As opposed to London?
OM: Yes, despite London’s closer association with socialism, when it comes to culture it probably thrives more strongly in literature, in music, in the dramatized arts. Contem- porary art or the visual arts maybe not so much. It has a much more constipated existence in a way, more repressed, and maybe modernist ideas of beauty. Therefore, in a way, I kind of do not have a very strong connection. I think my relationship is more theoretical. More in conceptualism and not in aesthetics.
MD: You identify politically with London.
OM: I think I have an understanding of it through the politicized and it is driven by an innate DNA that is mine.