Oswaldo Maciá (b. 1960, Cartagena, Colombia) is an artist based in London. Maciá describes his modus operandi in the following statement: "My work seeks to question assumptions about knowledge and perception. The ways in which we attempt to understand our place in the world is structured through conventions and expectations that often overwhelm our own direct perception of what surrounds us. Throughout my sound-sculptures, smell-sculptures, videos and installations, I aim to create encounters that initiate and reflect upon multiple relationships with what-is-believed-to-be-reality. My work sets out to complicate what-we-think-we-know by offering counter-perceptions in proposals to look harder, listen more acutely, and pay attention to the senses in order to think deeper about the structures of knowledge we rely on to construct that which is taken for knowledge."
‘Equilibrium’ from Oswaldo Macia on Vimeo.
Maciá's works on paper point to his interest in intensities and registers of balance stretching across a number of interconnected projects. Each work on paper is a type of blueprint or drawing study for his multi-media works, usually resulting in installations. His works have been exhibited in prestigious exhibitions such as Tate Liverpool Biennale, the 51st Venice Biennial, the Shanghai Biennale, the VIII Bienal de La Habana, the Thessaloniki Biennale in 2009, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and the Whitechapel Gallery. Recently, Maciá's sound installation, titled, Something Going On Above My Head, (1999/2010) was acquired for the permanent collection of Tate Modern in London.
