2018

During his residency, Karl Orozco presented "Come You Back to Maynila Bay," a community engagement printmaking project using hand-carved linoleum majjong tiles to retell family narratives of his grandmother's underground gambling den in the Philippines.  Surrounded by large-scale sculptural signs in the Neon Museum's new NE10 Studio space, Orozco was inspired to create sculptural works based on traditional Bulul sculptures from the Island of Luzon.  His "Bumalik" neon work was gifted to the Neon Museum.

Karl Orozco, a Filipino-American printmaker, illustrator, comic artist and educator, creates work that grapples with the legacy of colonialism and seeks to challenge assumed notions of race, family, migration and power.  A graduate of Oberlin College with a B.A. in Visual Art and Sociology, Orozco was awarded an Oberlin Shansi In-Asia research grant and later became an Oberlin Shansi Teaching Fellow in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.  He is currently a museum educator and teaching artist for the Queens Museum in New York City.