VENICE.- Oscar Murillo will stage a large-scale installation in the historic setting of the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice, which will include new paintings by the artist alongside an extensive, interactive presentation of Frequencies, his long-term collaborative project with schoolchildren across the world. Oscar Murillo: A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise will be presented at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, Venice, from 17 September - 27 November 2022.

Frequencies is an ongoing global art project conceived by Oscar Murillo in 2013. The artist and his collaborators visit schools worldwide, fixing raw canvas to classroom desks with the sole requirement that they remain there for a school term, inviting students aged 10-16 to freely mark, draw, scribble or write on them. Over the past nine years, Frequencies has grown to become a vast global project involving more than 400 schools in over 30 countries, including Brazil, China, India, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Lebanon, Nepal, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey, UK, USA and many others. To date, over 100,000 school children have contributed to the project.

Viewed en masse, the canvases convey the conscious and unconscious energy of young minds at their most absorbent, optimistic and conflicted. Often contributed to by several students, the canvases are densely layered with drawings, slogans, messages and motifs. The canvases feature universally recognised words and images alongside culturally specific expressions – the result of a project that is both a local and global endeavour.

The project has brought together a huge, multi-layered volume of material over almost a decade from locations across the world. Murillo has been working in recent years to develop new ways to open up this archive internationally and to create new opportunities for its rich content to be experienced. A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise will be the first opportunity for the wider public to experience some of these new interventions first-hand.

New work by Murillo will be exhibited for the first time, including a 9-metre-wide gestural painting, inspired by Monet’s Water Lilies. Murillo is particularly interested by the fact that Monet suffered from cataracts, and his own series is informed by the idea of ‘social cataracts’, a failure of individuals to see one another’s suffering in today’s society. Also on view are large-scale works from his Disrupted Frequencies series featuring multiple Frequencies canvases stitched together. A new sound piece by Murillo will play throughout the exhibition. Made up of layered recordings from different locations such as school playgrounds, basketball courts, traffic roundabouts and vegetable gardens, the generative soundscape will move through the space and respond to live data tracking the take-off, landing and flight paths of planes on global routes chosen by Murillo.

Inside an enclosed area at the centre of the exhibition, visitors will be able to discover Arepas y Tamales, Murillo’s recent collection of wearable sculptures. Motifs and drawings by Murillo have been digitally transformed onto virtual garments which visitors can ‘try on’ and move around in, as video projections flood the walls and react to movement within the space. Works from Murillo’s Flight Drawings series, made on planes during international air travel, will also be on display.

An arena space with tiered seating will host a wide-ranging public programme of events curated by SAVVY Contemporary to accompany the exhibition. Launching on Saturday 17 September from 2pm until late and inspired by the global nature of Murillo’s Frequencies project, the programme will feature dance, music, poetry and talks by artists from around the world. Music by composer and musician Tanka Fonta, performances by Ekow Alabi & the Drummers of Joy, poetry readings by writer and performer Frank Báez, a performance by Danish-Kenyan dancer and choreographer Phyllis Akinyi, and a folkloric mashup from a group of 14 singers and musicians from the Valle del Cauca region of Colombia will take place throughout the opening day. All events are free to attend.