no limits pepon osorio - Berkowitz - Educational Pages

1 URBAN GEOGRAPHIES ARE TYPICALLY characterized by strictly bounded neighborhoods connected by lim-inal zones of contact. A si ngle avenue can mark the edge of poverty or wealth, alienation or belonging. Communities are separated physically, ideologically, and historically from each other by conditions of power that perpetuate inequality, while th e environment of city streets requires a complex literacy to be properly deciphered. To be "at home" in the city is to be literate in the space of the city, to articulate a language of daily practice that is based on rhythms and regularities that form a routine. Most urban dwel1ers live within their own limit politics, in a network of circumscribed spaces linked together by the transit population t hat inh abits buses, trains, subways, and cars. Only rarely do people breach familiar limits , only rarely do they cross into unknown territory-whether that territory is a street, a ne ighborhood, or an art museum.

2 ' Pep6n osorio works within and th rough this limit poli-ti cs to draw our attention to the boundaries that define and circumscribe the everyday movement of men and women in urban communities, as well as the commodity culture that entices and envelops them. Many of osorio 's works can be read as a response to the effects of cultural di splacement on Puerto Ricans living in and around New York City-a displacement felt by the artist himself who arrived in 1975 at the age of twenty from Santurce, Puerto Rico. Mixing culturally specific aesthe ti c tradi-tions with a critical look at commodity culture , his early works trace the common effort on the part of immigrants to make a home away from home while negotiating the seduction of consumption as a method of assimilation. After a decade in the South Bronx, 6 CHAPTER FOUR osorio turned to the politics of violence as t he basis for anothe r series of works about the material conditions, cult ural traditions, and gender politics of masculinity.

3 In the process of producing these installations, osorio 's working method became one of interaction and par ticipat ion, conversation and collaboration. Many of his later installations a re con-ceived, developed, and constructed with members of youth groups, neighborhood associations, schools, and social se rvice offices. By involv-ing communities outs ide the art world in the process of pwductio n, and by installing the works in neighbo rhood storefronts, osorio ext ends the reach of his work beyo nd museum a nd gallery exhibitions. The artiSt's most recent works emphasize the uneven social relations that produce hiera rchies of class and race, revealing the necessity of bringing people face-to-face with t heir own limit politics. Drama and Domestici t y Oso rio's early coUaborative performances with dancer and choreographer Merian Soto involved the production of set designs that eventually formed the basis of h is sculptural and installation work t hat followed.

4 In 1985 t he artist produced the set for Codnado (Cooking). a multimedia performance cho reographed by Soto that used the narrative of a land rescue effort as a metaphor Cur the recuperation of Puerto Rican cultural traditions mo re generally.~ osorio modeled his set design o n the resourceful spontaneity of the rescatadores (rescuers), echOing a period of Puerto Rican history when g rassroots social movement s of the 1960s claimed land rights for the rural dispossessed. Los rescatadores de terrenos (rescuers of the land) built small dwellings or casitas on unoccupied t erritory, even t ually ga in ing ownership through squatters' rights.' Understood at the time as a recla-mation of land that would otherwise be lost t o the elite of a neo-colonialist government , the activity also privileged the rights of in dividual fa milies and neighborhoods over those of larger economic and political systems.

5 The legacy of rescatadores is visible today in the vacant lots of Manhattan's Lower East Side. osorio and r took a walk through this neighborhood in 1995 to view different styles of casita; each -little house" with its own verdant gard en. modest furnishings. and n eighborhood members hip seemed an oasis tucked between the grim, low in come apartment build ings. In his study of Puerto Rican barrios, Luis Aponte-Pares observes, "Casitas .. are generally located in neighborhoods that witnessed mas sive population displacement in the past three decades and now s uffer from extreme pover ty." Borrowing construction techniques of rural workers' housing, the casitas in Manhattan serve as a community space for neighborhood meetings and social event s. Aponte-Pares argues that t he casita is a source of Puerto Rican pride in the otherwise anonymous space of the city: -The decline and loss of institutions, bodegas.

6 Churches, social centers, s chools, friends, a nd neighbors has led t o a collective need PtiP6N osorio : NO limits for people to play an active role in rearranging the environment , and thereby res to ring the community's sense of well being.~5 For each performance of Cocinado, actors built a casita from scratch in front of t he audience. As the story unfolded, the domestic scene came to life, complete with hanging laundry, live chickens, dancers, and For h is innova tive set design referencing this vernacular archi-tectural tradition, osorio won the New York Dance and Performance (BESSIE) award. Many of the cri tical concerns the art is t has subsequently pursued were condensed in this work: a recuperation of vernacular t radi-tio ns, an attention to the spatial politics of neighborhoods and urban communities, a sympathy for the experience of displacement, and a squatter's penchant for temporary, site-specific architectures.

7 As par t of the design fo r Cocinado, osorio included elaborately decorated props , such as La Bicicleta (The Bicycle) (1985), inspired by the bicycles rid-den by local street vendors in hi s hometown of Santurce (figure ). With reflective papers t ied to the spokes, strings of plastic beads and stream-ers hung from the handlebars, and white plastic roses, golden leaves, and faux pearls glued on every surface. the bicycle shimmered with color and light as it moved across the stage. Closely viewed, La Bicicleta also revealed miniature palm trees, colorful fish, toy action heroes, and gilt crucifixes. In addition to serving as a lively prop, La Bicicleta presented a microcosm of the is land experience. boyhood fantasies, and religious upbringing of the a rtist's past. "At the very beginning.~ osorio has com-mented. ~I was using ar tifacts as a way of dealing with my m emory.

8 Deal-ing with my childhood. dealing wit h images of being a child."? Speaking as a self-proclaimed embelequero {embelli sher}, osorio has explained his impulse to customize commercial object s such as the bicycle: "Having been denied a national identity. Puerto Ricans never accept things as they are given to them .. They fo rge a self-identity by giving things a personal touCh.~1 This decorative imperative is more than an aesthetic gesture on osorio 's part; it mimetically reproduces a common criti cal response of many minority communities to the condition of living in a material world driven by an economy of mass product ion and cul tural uniformity. La Bicicleta further signifies a life wheeled from place to place: a life of tran-siti on, of immigrat ion, of cultural diaspora. Another work t o originate as a theatrical prop. and the first to be staged as part of a room-sized installation.

9 La Cama (The Bed) (:1987) was designed for an interpretive performance by Soto at the Longwood Gallery in the Bro nx (figure ). The performance commemorated ri tes of passage from birth to death. from childhood to adulthood. and from innocence to knowledge. According to osorio , the prop was inspired by a personal dream in which, fearfully hiding behind a tomb or deathbed. the artist waits to in t roduce Soto (h is light-skinned future wife) to Juana {the 168 CHAPTER FOUR 4 .1 ~p6a OlOriO, Bkid~!II, 1985. Photo by Tllny Velez. Courtesy o f EI M .. eo del Barrio, New York. 4.' Pep6n OIOriO, Cllmll, n view. Collection o f EI MUleo dol Barrio. Photo by Tony Velez;. Courtely o f El Museu del BOinlo, York. I'El'ON osorio : NO limits 169 dark-skinned who raised him as a child). In the dream, Juana lifts herself from the bed and gently whispers a few words in Spanish and in an African language to tell him she Cama was thus a memo-rial to Juana-an offering of material opulence for the dead-as well as a celebration of osorio 's future marriage.}

10 Painted hearts, lovebirds, and cherubs adorned the base and frame of La Cama, while Catholic saints and virgins in frames of gold appeared as offerings on the pillows. The white lace coverlet was studded with a layer of capias or recuerdos-popular tokens of affection exchanged at baptisms and anniversaries-each carefully attached to the bed by a ribbon. Of course , a bed is a highly overdetermined object in a household: the site of intimacy, of the pri-mal scene, of birth and of death. It is not by accident that osorio reads his relationships to the women in his life through this material trope. Nevertheless, La Cama was more than a repOSitory for personal fears and desires; it worked metaphorically to illuminate the artist's interrogation into the binary logics of racial identity and familial bonds. Atop the bedposts, paired figures posed in tiny emblem-atic scenes of life's stages: a black baby and a white baby, a black groom and a white bride, a skeleton dressed in black and one in white.