About Oscar

Oscar Soto is an artist and fabricator based in Spartanburg, SC. Born in Brazil to a Chilean father and a Chilean-born “American” mother, and raised in a house where he often could not understand the languages spoken around him, Oscar has always maintained a complicated and playfully self-aware relationship with personal identity and collective identifiers. His work often combines elements of humor and absurdity with sparse presentations that belie profound uncertainties about navigating a social where a sense of belonging remains elusive.

After completing a BFA in painting at Winthrop, he worked as a custom picture framer before moving abroad to teach English. He spent 3 years teaching in South Korea before ultimately spending over 4 years in Chile. Much of his time in Chile was spent in the southern city of Temuco, in the old unoccupied house where his father grew up, literally between a church and a prison. In that home, he rediscovered his love of art and began a body of painting that led him to back to the United States to pursue art.

In 2017, Oscar returned to the United States to begin his MFA studies. Finding momentum in both woodworking and digital fabrication, he began to focus on making furniture-based sculpture, finding the familiarity and accessibility of furniture ideal for creating social tableaus without relying on human figures or actors.

Oscar recently served as the studio manager for Wofford College’s department of art and art history.