Image: Museum Ovartaci, Aarhus
Museum Ovartaci in Aarhus is in the final weeks of The Line that Holds the World · O de Óscar – El trazO que sOstiene el mundO, the first international solo exhibition of the Chilean artist Óscar Morales Martínez, which closes on 18 October 2026.
Born in Santiago in 1951, Morales has made art for more than three decades as a resident of a psychiatric hospital. According to the museum, drawing became an essential practice for him: a space for reflection, resistance and existence. Ovartaci describes him as a central figure in Latin American Art Brut.
He works in felt-tip pen, in intense colours and repeating patterns. Architectural fantasies, everyday scenes and figures inspired by science fiction fill the drawings, which follow a system of signs the artist devised himself. The museum likens it to a visual grammar in which each work serves as both memory and story.
The exhibition brings together works from several periods, among them his monumental “machine” series: imaginary constructions that connect his images with his own texts and science-fiction narratives. Artist’s books, handwritten poems and essays are also on view, along with an audiovisual installation built around the documentary film O de Óscar, which the museum says offers a rare insight into his creative process and life.
Ovartaci sets the work in dialogue with the Art Brut tradition of art made outside established systems, and uses the show to raise questions of inclusion, care, cultural rights and the value of voices from the margins of society.
The exhibition is curated by Paula Caballería Aguilera, a curator specialising in Art Brut and director of Fundación Setba Chile, and produced by Beatriz Salinas Marambio in close collaboration with the museum. “The Line that Holds the World shows us that art is not just aesthetics but a necessity,” Caballería Aguilera says.
In its October newsletter, the museum invites visitors to make a drawing for Óscar during their visit.
