Uriel Orlow
Uriel Orlow lives and works between Lisbon, London and Zurich. He studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design London, the University of Geneva, the Slade School of Art/University College London and UAL, completing a PhD in Fine Art in 2002.
Uriel Orlow is the recipient of the 2023 Swiss Grand Prix for Art / Prix Meret Oppenheim. In 2020 he received the C. F. Meyer Prize and in 2017 he was awarded the Sharjah Biennial prize. He also received a ‘Werkjahr’ award from the City of Zurich in 2015 and three Swiss Art Awards at Art Basel (2008, 2009, 2012) and was shortlisted for the Jarman award in 2013.
In 2020 Archive Books is publishing his monograph Conversing with Leaves, in 2019 Shelter Press published Soil Affinities and in 2018 Sternberg Press published Theatrum Botanicum.
Uriel Orlow’s practice is research-driven, process-oriented and often in dialogue with other disciplines and people. Projects engage with residues of colonialism, spatial manifestations of memory, social and ecological justice, blind spots of representation and plants as political actors. His multi-media installations focus on specific locations, micro-histories and forms of haunting. Working across installation, photography, film, drawing, sound and gardens his works bring different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence.
Uriel Orlow’s work has been presented at major survey exhibitions including in 2022 at the Berlin Biennale, British Art Show 9, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kathmandu Triennale 2077 and 14th Dakar Biennale and previously at the 54th Venice Biennale, Manifesta 9 & 12 in Genk and Palermo, Lubumbashi Biennial VI, 13th Sharjah Biennial, 7th Moscow Biennial, 8th Mercosul Biennial amongst others.
Notable and recent solo exhibitions include Casa da Cerca, Almada (2022–2023), Kunsthalle Nairs Switzerland (2021), La Loge, Brussels; State of Concept, Athens (both 2020), Kunsthalle Mainz (2019-2020), Tabakalera, San Sebastian and Villa Romana Florence (2019), Kunsthalle St Gallen Switzerland, Market Photo Workshop Johannesburg and Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers Paris (2018), PAV Turin (2017), The Showroom London (2016), Castello di Rivoli (2015).
Orlow’s work has also been shown in film festivals, museums and galleries internationally including at Locarno Film Festival, Oberhausen Film Festival in London at Tate, ICA and Gasworks and Whitechapel Gallery; in Paris at Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Ricard, Maison Populaire, Bétonsalon; at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart; Project Arts, Dublin; and in Mexico City; Chicago, Vancouver; Cairo, Cape Town, Melbourne and elsewhere.
Orlow has taught at art colleges internationally including Goldsmiths University of London; Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London; HEAD – University of the Arts Geneva, Royal College of Art, London. He is currently reader (associate professor/ senior researcher) at University of Westminster, London and docent at ZHdK, the University of the Arts, Zurich.