Manuel Ocampo b. 1965
“The strong symbolism in my paintings is presented as empty signs. I want to push the conventions of painting to the point of ridicule…to go beyond thought.”
– Manuel Ocampo
Artist Biography
Manuel Ocampo (b. 1965, Quezon, Philippines, based in Manila, Philippines) composes highly-charged paintings that undermine established conventions of art and beauty. Religious icons, satirical cartoons, provocative slogans, kitsch graphics and depictions of the macabre are densely juxtaposed across his pictorial surfaces, dissolving all sense of hierarchy and coherence. By doing so, his work alludes to the unstable nature of personal and collective identities.
Pursuing his practice in Los Angeles, Rome and Seville in the 1990s, Ocampo’s paintings gained recognition amid heightened international interest towards multiculturalism and identity politics. Moreover, the artist regarded such fixed narratives as restrictive and unnecessary, choosing instead to entangle 'high' and 'low' cultures to escape closed readings—a perspective he maintains to this day. In paintings such as Untitled (reclining sausage, vulture, skull) (2006), Culture Vulture (2020) and Utopia 1932 (2022), food remnants, Catholic motifs and body parts feature alongside a cartoonish vulture. The creature is used as a recurring metaphor for the artist himself as a scavenger of symbols, across the constructs of culture and time.
Ocampo completed his art education at the University of the Philippines, Quezon and California State University, Bakersfield in 1984 and 1985 respectively. His work is held in major collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Oakland Museum; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern; Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Canary Islands; Sintra Museu de Arte Moderna, Lisbon; Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris; and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
Notable exhibitions include Chances of Contact (2024), Metropolitan Museum of Manila; Children of Saturn (2019), Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art; The Spectre of Comparison (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; Paper Cuts (2018), Palo Alto Art Center; and SUNSHOWER (2017), National Art Center, Tokyo and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including Nirin (2020), 22nd Biennale of Sydney; APT7 (2012), 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; Terrible Beauty (2011), 1st Dublin Contemporary; Plateau of Humankind (2001), 49th Venice Biennale, Venice; 2nd Berlin Biennale (2001); Partage d’exotismes (2000), 5th Lyon Biennale; Unmapping the Earth (1997), 2nd Gwangju Biennale; and Documenta IX (1992), 9th Documenta, Kassel. Ocampo represented the Philippines at Viva Arte Viva (2017), 57th Venice Biennale.
Ocampo had his residency at the STPI Workshop in 2018, resulting in the exhibition Ideological Mash-Up/Remix (2019).
