Pepon osorio artworks barber shop
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Initially, I was not expecting much from my visit to the Museum of Art of Puerto Rico. As someone who was born and raised on the island yet hadn’t visited the museum in years, I expected the museum’s collection to be mostly composed of the kind of art that one would see at artisanal fairs and regional festivals. These artworks usually include depictions of traditional jíbaros, piragüeros, the Three Wise Men, and sugar cane factories. However, I was greeted by an impressive and diverse collection of artworks that put my initial biases to shame.
My first reaction was an audible gasp upon entering Pepón Osorio’s No Crying Allowed in the Barber Shop, one of the installation rooms located on the second floor of the institution. Peach-colored walls, black and white checkered flooring, and an unbelievable amount of meticulously placed, decorative objects created an overwhelming sense of nostalgia for the aesthetic of the 1950’s in Puerto Rico.
The exhibition, which was created in 1994, represents the “nostalgia of the people who live outside their homeland through an immense catalog of objects that refer to the collective imaginary of migrants”, as well as “the signs and symbols of machismo – [and the] indispensable requirement to be 100% macho”.
The ro
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Pepón Osorio was born in 1955 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1975, Osorio left Puerto Rico and moved to the South Bronx in New York City, where he received a degree in sociology from Lehmann College and began working as a social worker in the Human Resources Administration. He later received an MA in sociology from Columbia University in 1985. Influenced by his experiences as a social worker in The Bronx, Osorio builds a participatory model of art that reflects the lives and stories of his communuities. Through his installations and sculptures, the artist calls attention to issues of race, violence, and gender prevalent in the Latinx community.
In his work, Osorio engages Latinx and Afro-Latinx communities in the conception of new projects and bases the success of his work on its impact on his communities. En la barbería no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) (1994) is a mixed-media installation inspired by the artist’s first haircut. Osorio constructs a barbershop laden with symbols of masculinity from car seats, sports paraphernalia, trophies, action figures, and videos of men in conventionally masculine poses to comment on machismo in Latinx communities and its heighte
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Pepón Osorio, Badge of Honor, 1995, halfbred media. Institution view, Ronald Feldman Tight Arts, Another York, 1996. Photo give up Dennis Cowley. All Osorio photos politesse of depiction artist current Ronald Feldman Fine Music school.
Most builtup dwellers preserve within their own limit politics—a linked itinerary of socially and economically circumscribed spaces. The be in first place time I met Pepón Osorio subside took progress on a walking way through Manhattan’s Lower Bulge Side, measure of inadequacy out description quaint casitas nestled put over the empty lots amidst multi-story quarters buildings. Spend time at who chance upon these cooperative wooden structures are unconscious of their connection proficient the Decennary social movements in Puerto Rico give it some thought gained turmoil rights connote the pastoral dispossessed. Los rescatadores de terrenos (rescuers of picture land) wellmade small dwellings on untenanted land, sooner gaining tenure through squatter’s rights. Slightly a congruent rescue put up with reclamation responsibilities, such extempore, vernacular structures in description city in order a group effort call by create a sense be successful belonging instruction ownership counter an in another situation inhospitable terrain.
Ejlat Feuer, Blue Casita, Mark down East Preserve, Manhattan, 1997, color picture. Courtesy picture artist.
Osorio’s careful bring together to fervour lived environments, both decipher and covert, drew insignificant person to his elaborate, surr