Dr Uriel Orlow


Uriel Orlow is an artist and writer. He is known for his modular, multi-media installations that take specific locations and events as starting points and bring different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence.

Exhibitions, Publications, Reviews, Awards

In 2017 Orlow was awarded the Sharjah Biennial prize. He also received the annual art-award of the City of Zurich in 2015 and three Swiss Art Awards at Art Basel and was shortlisted for the Jarman award in 2013.

Orlow’s work is presented widely in museums, film festivals and international survey shows including Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018), 2nd Yinchuan Biennial (2018), 13th Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), 7th Moscow Biennial (2017), EVA International, Limerick (2016), 2nd Aichi Triennale, Nagoya (2013), Bergen Assembly (2013), Manifesta 9 (2012), 54th Venice Biennale (2011).

Recent solo exhibitions include Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris (2018); Market Photo Workshop & Pool, Johannesburg (2018); Kunsthalle St Gallen (2018); PAV – Parco Arte Vivente (2017);  Parc Saint Léger (2017), The Showroom, London (2016); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2015); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2015); Depo, Istanbul (2015), Spike Island (2013).

Orlow’s work has also been shown in museums, galleries internationally including in London at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery, ICA and Gasworks; in Paris at Palais de Tokyo, Fondation Ricard, Maison Populaire, Bétonsalon; in Zurich at Kunsthaus, Les Complices, Helmhaus and Shedhalle; in Geneva at Centre d’Art Contemporain and Centre de la Photographie; as well as in Berlin, Ramallah, Marseille, Cairo, Alexandria, Istanbul, Mexico City, Dublin, San Sebastian, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver and elsewhere.

Orlow’s films have been screened at Oberhausen Short Film Festival; Locarno Film Festival; Videoex, Zurich; Centre Pompidou, Paris; BFI, London; Kino der Kunst, Munich; Visions du Réel, Nyon; Biennale of the Moving Image, Geneva and others.

Reviews of his work have appeared in: Frieze, Artforum, Art Monthly, Flash Art, Kunstbulletin, Art in America, The Guardian - amongst others.

Orlow's writing has been published in MIRAJ (Moving Image Review and Art Journal), the Journal of Visual Culture and the Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series amongst others.

Orlow studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and The Slade School of Art, London and philosophy at the University of Geneva, graduating with a PhD in Fine Art from the University of the Arts London in 2002. Between 2005 and 2008 he held an AHRC fellowship in the creative arts. In 2012 he received a Swiss Art Award at Art Basel. In 2013 he was nominated for a Jarman Award in London.


Uriel Orlow's research focuses on specific locations and micro-histories and brings different image-regimes and narrative modes into correspondence. His work is concerned with spatial manifestations of memory, blind spots of representation and forms of haunting. Areas of interest include: moving image practice, lens-based media and installation, the politics of representation, the ethics of the image, the roles of the artist (as ethnographer, archivist, geographer, historian etc.), questions of restitution, more-than-human witnessing and nature as a political agent.

Recent research projects include Soil Affinities, Theatrum Botanicum, Unmade Film,  The Benin Project, Remnants of the Future, The Short and the Long of It.


  • Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media