Pepón Osorio (born 1955 Santurce, Puerto Rico) is a Latino artist. He was educated at the Universidad Inter-Americana, Puerto Rico, Lehman College, and graduated from Columbia University with an MA in 1985.
His work is held by the Walker Arts Center, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, and El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. He shows at Ronald Feldman Gallery. He lives in Philadelphia. Pepón currently teaches at Tyler School of Art, part of Temple University.
“En la barbaria no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Babershop),” detail, 1994
Installation at Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut.
Mixed media installation with barbers’ chairs, photographs, objects and videos, dimensions variable.
Mixed media installation with barbers’ chairs, photographs, objects and videos, dimensions variable.
Photo by Frank Gimpaya. Collection of the Museum de Arte de Puerto Rico
Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
“‘No Crying Allowed in the Barber Shop’…it’s about recreating my memory. When I was five years old my father took me to get my first haircut right around the neighborhood. And what was meant to be a celebration 
became disastrous event. I was crying a lot, I was scared…What traumatized me wasn’t so much the haircut itself but the way that this barber dealt with my kind of hair…That experience was a combination of race and a right of passage into becoming a little man.” – Pepón Osorio
became disastrous event. I was crying a lot, I was scared…What traumatized me wasn’t so much the haircut itself but the way that this barber dealt with my kind of hair…That experience was a combination of race and a right of passage into becoming a little man.” – Pepón Osorio