Pepón Osorio

Jennifer A. GonzÁlez teaches in the Department of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. She has written for numerous periodicals including AztlÁn, Frieze, Bomb, Camera Obscura, and Art Journal. Her book Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art was a finalist for the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award.

Narratively powerful (aligned with a history of visual arts storytellers like Adrian Piper and Edward Kienholz), visually compelling, and ethically just, PepÓn Osorio stands as a transitional figure bridging museum installation and field-based social practices. He is, in fact, one of the first American figures in this field to focus a deeply implicated, and sympathetic, eye on the lives of the so-called others-the immigrants, the violated, and the working class-in ways that are comprehensible to people from all walks of life. I admire his work intensely, and I can think of no one better equipped to tell his story than Jennifer GonzÁlez.-Suzanne Lacy, Chair, MFA Public Practice at Otis College of Art and DesignIn PepÓn Osorio author Jennifer GonzÁlez seamlessly weaves together the artist’s biography with his interventions in the fields of performance, installation, and public art. More than a monograph on a leading artist, this book reveals a sustained, collaborative practice that joins art and politics, museum and casita. Here Osorio’s work excavates and destabilizes the sedimented layers of New York City as a global art center: its Caribbean communities become central, Latino cultures cut in and out of African American traditions, the South Bronx repurposes Hollywood’s melodramas, and the barbershop substitutes for the university as the place to debate sexuality and gender roles.-Esther Gabara, author of Errant Modernism: The Ethos of Photography in Mexico and Brazil PepÓn Osorio provides an in-depth study of one of the leading installation artists working in the United States. Based in meaningful community collaboration, Osorio's installations employ ubiquitous material culture to explore how communities and individuals negotiate the legacy of colonialism and continued marginalization. The conceptual depth of his work finds its match in Jennifer GonzÁlez, who teases out the many layers of Osorio’s practice from his earliest stage-prop sculptures. Thoughtful and revealing, PepÓn Osorio is a must read for scholars interested Latino, Puerto Rican, and installation art.-E. Carmen Ramos, Curator for Latino Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum