Pepón Osorio

Pepón Osorio receives the Distinguished Arts Award at the 2017 Pennsylvania Governor's Award for the Arts from Governor Tom Wolf.

Pepón Osorio is a Puerto Rican artist. He uses different objects as well as video in his pieces to portray political and social issues in the Latino community. He was born in 1955 in Santurce, Puerto Rico and studied at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, Lehman College, and also Columbia University where he obtained his MA in sociology in 1985.

His work is held by the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and by the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art.

He shows at Ronald Feldman Gallery. He lives in Philadelphia. Pepón currently teaches at Tyler School of Art, part of Temple University.

Early career

In 1975, Osorio moved to the Bronx, New York. He began making art in 1976. In 1985, Osorio changed his artistic approach to focus more on self-identity and cultural reaffirmation. Beginning with The Bicycle (1987), he focused on transforming ordinary inexpensive objects by adding layers of decoration—religious figures, holy cards, plastic flowers, ribbons, photographs, dolls, swans, palm trees, and other small plastic objects. For Osorio, his process as an “embelequero” is a common one among Puerto Rican people. As he says, “You re-invent with what’s there...you never accept anything as it is given to you.” For him, this additive process creates “an abundance that is not really there.” It is a way of personalizing and appropriating these inexpensive mass-produced objects.

This change in his visual vocabulary is what led him to create his important pieces of the '80s. The Bicycle was based on memories of his own bicycle and those of others he knew in Puerto Rico—his friends, the avocado vendor, and the knife sharpener. El Chandelier (1987) and its accompanying performance, No Regrets (1987), with choreographer Merián Soto, commemorates the life of a Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx. The chandelier was one of the few luxuries she could afford. La Cama (The Bed) (1987) commemorates Juana Hernández, a woman Osorio considered a second mother. Hernández had died in 1982. La Cama, which had large photographs of Soto and Osorio, was also a way of introducing Juana to Merián, whom Osorio later married. Osorio often collaborated with choreographer Soto in performances and as a set and installation designer. Osorio integrated performance and dance into his work as a way to more clearly portray the Latino body. In La Cama, there was an implied but physically absent body.

Focusing on the AIDS pandemic

In 1991, Osorio created a piece inside of New York’s El Museo Del Barrio called El Velorio – AIDS in the Latino Community in which 7 coffins were left to represent the victims of Puerto Rican people who died from AIDS. Each coffin was filled with information about the victims who died which included different items such as heartwarming notes from friends and family, flowers, and even a mirror which was meant to help the viewer connect more personally to the piece.

Discovering film

Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?) (1993) at the New Museum in 2023

During the 1990s, Osorio began to work with video which prompted his entrance into the mainstream art world. His two-room installation Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?) was created for the Whitney Biennial in 1993. In this piece, there is a covered body on the living room floor that viewers are led to assume is a woman who was murdered by her husband. Surrounded by crime scene tape, the Latino domestic space is deconstructed by becoming a crime scene, as well as showing larger-than-life stereotypes about Puerto Rican culture. The living and dining rooms are filled with an overwhelming proliferation of religious figures, trophies, small framed photographs, enlarged photographs, Puerto Rican flags and souvenirs, and ads for Latino food products, along with Osorio's other embellishments. The gold silk sofa is stabbed with more than half a dozen souvenir machetes that say, "Puerto Rico." The dead body, which is hard to find in the overly-decorated living room, alludes to the way Latinos are often depicted as violent criminals in films.

The installation is framed by walls of videotapes of real Hollywood films that depict negative Latino stereotypes. On each box is a statement by someone in the Latino community whom Osorio interviewed about how they were represented in film. One person said, “We’re either seen as violent, horny, or on welfare. They show our humanity not our struggles and empowerment." The installation makes it clear that the real crime is how Puerto Ricans and Latinos are negatively depicted in mainstream films. The welcome mat in front of the installation gives a powerful statement of Osorio's intention: “...only if you can understand that it has taken years of pain to gather into our homes our most valuable possessions, but the greatest pain is to see in the movies how others make fun of the way we live."

Osorio uses film as a way to be there in the piece when he can’t physically. Osorio decided after having his work at the Whitney Biennial that he wouldn’t have any more work in mainstream art museums unless it is first shown to the Puerto Rican community. This decision was made in response to the controversy of what kind of art and which social groups could/should be shown in the museum. His focus on the Latino body didn’t fulfill his intentions of shedding more light upon the Puerto Rican community, although it did bring attention to his own personal work.

Gender roles

In 1994, Osorio created an installation called En La Barberia, No Se Llora (No Crying In the Barbershop), which he used to explore Latino masculinity. He described the barber shop as a place where men would go on the weekends as a sort of social gathering to do business and also play dominoes. There was no crying allowed in the barbershop because crying was a sign of being feminine which is strictly forbidden in a place that was meant only for men. Osorio had many different men from all ages featured in the videos for the installation as a way to portray and explore the issue of machismo in the Latino community. Osorio also brought women into the video installations as a way to try and break the gender boundary of the barbershop. Sixteen video monitors were put on display showing the different men in different physical and emotional states of masculinity along with two color monitors displaying men crying without any audio. The walls of the barbershop were lined with portraits of different Latino men, Benjamin Osorio (his father) being the biggest portrait.

Awards

• 1985 Bessie Award
• 1999 MacArthur Foundation Program

External links

• "Pepón Osorio", Arts 21, PBS
• "Pepón Osorio", Artnet