Oscar Murillo: Frequencies

How do communities define themselves, and how can a single individual—an artist—help facilitate communication between them and the larger world? Frequencies is a long-term project conceived by Oscar Murillo (born 1986) in collaboration with writer Clara Dublanc that begins to offer answers to these questions through painting and drawing. In 2013 Murillo began sending squares of raw canvas to selected schools in over 20 countries around the world, with the sole requirement that they be affixed to desks and illustrated by students. The canvases would stay there for a period of time and then be re-collected by the artist. Within weeks of their arrival, children from places as disparate as China and Slovenia began to draw, paint, write and communicate, creating documents of their experiences. Frequencies catalogues the first year of Murillo’s exploration, with photographs of the participants and the project’s myriad stages.