Spread across three spaces at Fundação de Serralves (“hall” contemporary and chapel), the exhibition “brings together some of the most important works developed by the artist in recent years, such as “Frequencies”, “as well as new works created especially for this occasion”, such as a new painting made for his “Manifestation” series, displayed in the chapel.

Oscar Murillo, co-winner of the 2019 Turner Prize, told journalists that “Frequencies” refers to his biography (Colombian born on the imaginary equator, living in London since he was 10 years old), which encouraged the idea of freedom.

“It gave me the idea that I’m from there, I can move freely. Migrating and the burden of migrating from one side to the other kind that traumatized me positively”, since the virtue of movement from one part of the world to another, in which this collaboration began to gain momentum and energy”, wad “the most important aspect” of his practise.

In the museum’s hall you can visit, developed since 2013, “Frequencies” consists of the presentation of painted canvasses that were fixed to the desks of students aged 10 to 16 in schools around the world, leaving them free to scratch, draw and write during classes, over a period of six months.

In the case of the exhibition in Serralves, the project involved schools in the North region, with the cavasses made by students in Portugal, accessible to the public, surrounded by others worked on over the years by Murillo, form the series “Disrupted Frequencies”, with blue as the trend, representing water, a striking element in the artist’s work.

“Frequencies” is “a kind of library, where each person can write a diverse and almost infinite number of essays” depending on where it originates and is also “an open essay, in which the viewer has the possibility of bringing their own judgement and reading”.

The “hall” also has several uniforms presented that include elements digitally extracted from drawing made on the student’s desks, in which Murillo promotes “the fusion and conjunction of fall bodies of work, spanning many years”, departing form the Colombian ritual of burning of effigies at the end of each year for “the desire to merge the spirit of diversity, cultural benefits, representations, through ideas of labour and the working class, in an universal way”.