Oscar Rene Cornejo

Oscar Rene Cornejo is an artist who was born in Houston, Texas, and splits his time between New York and Western Massachusetts. With a background in pedagogy and activism, Cornejo's socially engaged practice draws together histories of abstraction in the U.S. and Latin America with personal experiences of the construction site, family memory, and historical forgetting. He earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art, a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union, and was a recipient of the J. William Fulbright Scholarship for research in El Salvador. In 2004, he cofounded the Latin American Community Art Project (LA CAPacidad), where for seven years he directed artist residencies to promote intercultural awareness through community art education. He is a founding member of Junte Adjuntas, an artist project based in Adjuntas, a town in the mountains of southern Puerto Rico. His work has been included in exhibitions at Radiator Gallery, Queens, New York; The Queens Museum; Recess: Assembly, Brooklyn, New York; Princeton University; and Diverseworks, Houston, Texas; among other venues. He has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Residency, and Yvonne Residency in Guatemala. Cornejo has taught at The Cooper Union, Hunter College, and in the Yale School of Art's Painting and Printmaking Department. He is an Assistant Professor within the Art Department at Cornell University's College of Art, Architecture, and Planning; during the summer season, he is the Fresco Instructor at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

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Classes (Selected)

• ART 2201: Introduction to Print Media
• ART 3399: Print Media Special Topics

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Schoelkopf Travel Prize, Yale School of Art (2009–11)
• IIE Fulbright Fellowship, El Salvador (2007–08)
• Menschel Fellowship / Randolph Hearst Scholarship, The Cooper Union (2000–05)
• Balfour Minority Scholarship, Rhode Island School of Design, Pre-College Summer Program, (1998)

Exhibitions and Presentations (Selected)

• To look at the sea is to become what one is, Radiator Gallery, Long Island City, NY (2019)
• Queens International 2018: Volumes, Queens Museum, Queens, NY (2018)
• State of Exception, Recess: Assembly, Brooklyn, NY (2018)
• White Flag, Princeton University, Bernstein Gallery, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (2017)