Photo credit: Maria Rand.
Every generation produces a few artists who do more than follow trends — they reshape the language of art itself.
In 2025, that name is Michael K. Owino.
A Copenhagen-based mixed-media visionary, Owino has become one of Europe’s most intriguing cultural exports, celebrated for fusing intellectual precision with raw, emotional depth.
With ten major international art prizes this year alone — including The Leonardo da Vinci – The Universal Artist and 50 Artists to Collect — his presence has become unavoidable in the global art conversation.
His exhibitions across Rome, Venice, New York, and Paris have cemented his reputation as a multidisciplinary creator capable of turning empathy into architecture and memory into form.
Owino’s work challenges the sterile minimalism of the present era, replacing it with a tactile, human immediacy. His sculptures breathe. His paintings speak.
And behind each piece is a man who turned a difficult youth into a lifelong laboratory of beauty, invention, and meaning.
When we spoke, Owino was preparing for another round of exhibitions while developing a new series of glass sculptures — a bold exploration of how fragility can hold strength, and how the future of art might just lie in emotional transparency.
Q: Michael, your year has been extraordinary — ten international awards and major exhibitions across Europe. How do you personally interpret this success?
Michael K. Owino: Success is never a straight line. I come from chaos — from a world where nothing seemed to last. To see my work now exhibited and recognized across Europe is both humbling and surreal. But I never see awards as a finish line; they’re checkpoints on a long internal road. My focus remains on creating work that feels necessary — not just beautiful.
Q: Your art explores love, family, and human connection — subjects that are emotional and universal. Why do these themes stay so close to you?
Michael K. Owino: Because they saved me. When everything else fell apart, the tenderness between people — a glance, a memory, a simple gesture — gave me something real to hold onto. My sculptures often capture that moment of intimacy we rarely speak about but all recognize instinctively. I want my art to whisper where words once failed me.
Q: You’ve spoken of a difficult childhood and youth. How does that past manifest in your creative process today?
Michael K. Owino: It’s there in everything — the silence, the tension, the search for beauty inside brokenness. My past doesn’t haunt me anymore; it instructs me. It taught me that fragility can be powerful. Every brushstroke, every cut in metal, is a dialogue between who I was and who I’ve become.Q:
Q: Having exhibited in major art capitals like Paris, New York, and Venice, what does it mean to you to now present your work in Rome, a city with such a deep and ancient artistic history?
Michael K. Owino: Rome is not just a backdrop — it’s a benchmark. It challenges every artist who steps into its orbit. You can’t stand in Rome without confronting the origins of form, balance, and proportion. Presenting my work there feels like placing contemporary thought inside an ancient equation. My goal wasn’t to compete with history but to contribute a new variable — emotion as architecture, vulnerability as structure. In that sense, Rome doesn’t intimidate me; it calibrates me.
Q: What message do you hope people take away from your work?
Michael K. Owino: That empathy is strength. Art should remind us that being human — in all its contradictions— is not something to escape but something to celebrate
Michael’s art is less about decoration than revelation.
Each sculpture and canvas feels like a fragment of a larger confession — something deeply human, born from solitude yet reaching outward with compassion.
He doesn’t ask viewers to admire; he asks them to feel, to recognize something familiar within themselves.
There’s a quiet power in that vulnerability — the same power that turned a complicated past into an extraordinary creative legacy.
And as Michael K. Owino continues to exhibit across the world, from Venice to New York and beyond, one thing becomes unmistakably clear: he isn’t chasing beauty — he’s redefining what it means to be seen.
To explore his current and upcoming projects, visit https://www.instagram.com/mickowino/
