[4] Murillo was born and spent the first ten years of his life in La Paila, a small town in the Valle del Cauca Department of Colombia, and one of the country's largest producer's of sugarcane.

His practice can be understood as a sustained and evolving investigation of community, informed by his cross-cultural personal ties between Colombia and the UK.

[…] One tutor from art school once said that the way I made work, or treated the studio, reminded her of when she was growing up in post-war Britain because then there was this idea that you had to be resourceful.

Speaking about the project, Murillo has said ‘The idea is to let these kids explore in the intimate reality of the school desk, to make marks of their own desires’.

In his work The Coming of the Europeans (2017), a large-scale banner conceived for the inaugural Kathmandu Triennale in the same year, he commented on the continuing legacy of colonialism in present-day international fairs.

In 2012, Murillo held a party for the cleaners at the Serpentine Galleries; in 2014, the artist brought Colombian factory workers to perform labour in a New York gallery space, and, at a residency in a collector’s home in Rio de Janeiro the same year, himself working alongside domestic staff and exhibiting white overalls dirtied by his exertion.

Murillo’s recent solo exhibitions include A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise at the Scuola Grande della Misericordia in Venice, Italy; Currents 121: Oscar Murillo, at Saint Louis Art Museum, US (both 2022); Social Cataracts at KM21, The Hague, Netherlands; Spirits and Gestures at Fondazione Memmo, Rome, Italy; Condiciones aún por titular at the Museum of Art of the National University of Colombia, Bogotá (all 2021-22); Frequencies, organised by Artangel at Cardinal Pole Catholic School, London; and MAM Project 029: Oscar Murillo, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (all 2021).