Oscar Rene Cornejo

Oscar Rene Cornejo is an artist who was born in Houston, Texas. With a background in pedagogy and activism, Cornejo draws together histories of abstraction in the U.S. and Latin America with personal experiences of the construction site, family memory, and historical archives. 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. 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, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Yale School of Art's Painting and Printmaking Department.

Related News

• Art Faculty Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo Awarded 2025 Creative Capital Project Grant
• Cornell Art Faculty 2024
• The B.F.A. Program at Cornell University
• Inquiry Through Making
• Cornell AAP Announces Eight New Faculty Members, Including Cross-Disciplinary Social Justice Cohort

Classes (Selected)

• ART 2301 Cultures of Print
• ART 3399 Print Media Special Topics: Images in Stone (Fresco and Lithography)
• ART 3399 Print Media Special Topics: Mokuhanga
• ART 2103 First-Year Studio Research Workshop
• ART 4100 Senior Seminar

Awards, Grants, and Fellowships (Selected)

• Watts Prize for Faculty Excellence (2023)
• 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)

• Mud + Corn + Stone + Blue. The Rubin Center. El Paso, TX (2024)
• Spring Faculty Exhibition, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY (2024)
• Tightly Knit, Loose Fit. Ortega y Gasset Projects. Brooklyn, NY (2023)
• Extrusions, Trinity College Fine Arts Department, Hartford, CT (2022)
• We Feel Our Way Through When We Don’t Know. Brattleboro Museum and Art Center. Brattleboro, VT (2022)
• Metafiguration. Tops Gallery. Memphis, TN (2022)
• 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)