Bernardo Mosqueira – författare

Pepón Osorio’s epic installations unite conceptual art and community dynamicsInformed by his background in theater and performance as well as his experiences as a child services case worker and professor, the richly textured sculptures and installations of Puerto Rican–born, Philadelphia-based artist Pepón Osorio (born 1955) are deeply invested in political, social and cultural issues affecting Latinx and working-class communities in the United States. Published for the artist’s most comprehensive exhibition to date, this catalog focuses on the elaborate, large-scale multimedia environments that Osorio has been creating since the early 1990s. Often developed through long-term conversations and collaborations with individuals in the neighborhoods where they were first shown, his installations draw from personal stories in order to empathetically elucidate larger social ills. Taken from an eponymous work, the book’s title addresses themes that resonate throughout Osorio’s practice, such as the need to better care for one another.

Recent film works from the international duo exploring cultural changeWorking together for a decade, artists Bárbara Wagner (born 1980, Brazil) and Benjamin De Burca (born 1975, Germany) produce films and video installations that feature protagonists engaged in cultural production. The duo typically collaborates with nonactors to make their films, from writing scripts to staging performances on camera. The resulting works are marked by economic conditions and social tensions present in the contexts in which they are filmed, giving urgency to new forms of self-representation through voice, movement and drama.Accompanying the exhibition at the New Museum—which focuses on projects that the artists filmed in Brazil over the past seven years, as well as a new commissioned piece featuring the theater group Coletivo Banzeiros—this volume includes a conversation between the artists and Margot Norton, as well as texts by Vivian Crockett, Bernardo Mosqueira and Wendelien van Oldenborgh.