Pepón Osorio, En la barbería no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop)

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0:00:05.3 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: We are at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan, and this is Pepón Osorio’s En la barbería no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) from 1994. Osorio was actually born here, and in 1975, at the age of 20, he moves to New York.

0:00:21.8 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: Pepón Osorio worked as a social worker in New York, and there he immersed himself in the Nuyorican community. And a lot of his work comes from his relationship with that community, wanting to speak to them directly and also involve them in this type of installation. In this installation, we find objects and images that relate both to the Nuyorican community and to Puerto Rico itself. He lines the walls with rim covers that reference the important car culture in both Nuyorican communities and in Puerto Rico. We find the flag of Puerto Rico also embedded into the barber chairs. We find references like that blown up tattoo that spells “Perdóname madre,” “Forgive me, mother.” And all of these elements allude to a particular masculine aesthetic that we find in the Nuyorican community, the Puerto Rican community, and perhaps in Latino communities at large.

0:01:15.2 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: As soon as I cross the threshold of the room, we go from a stone floor into this black and white tiled floor. I see wooden chairs covered in red velvet, a pool table, and then beyond that, the barber chairs and these stations for the barbers to do their work. And yet there are so many things that in my mind don’t belong in a barbershop or that speak to how Osorio is trying to challenge our understanding of the barbershop.

0:01:42.2 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: Elements like the pool table, the fake plants that adorn the installation transform the barber shop into a place to socialize, to express also culture in the context of the Nuyorican community. We also find a life size statue of Saint Lazarus, who is syncretized in Santería with the Yoruba oricha, Babalú-Ayé. And this manifestation is related to health and illness. Osorio could also be hinting to the wider community where we find a barber shop and maybe the botánica, maybe a bar where you will also play pool, those places of socialization, culture, and belief, in the case of the inclusion of the Saint Lazarus statue.

0:02:25.5 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: I really love the barber chairs. You see that at the base we have the flag of Puerto Rico. They are covered in what looks like red velvet, but then they are encrusted with all of these other things. I see plastic toys, dolls and figurines, little straw hats, fake plants that almost seem to grow from the chair itself. And then, as I imagine myself moving to sit down, I see a small television screen playing a video right where my head would be, and then imprinted on each of the chairs is an image of a nude male body from the neck down.

0:03:00.7 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: It makes you imagine sitting on that naked body, but also becoming that vulnerable naked body. We are in a barber chair where we let another person do our hair, shave our beards, and we become very vulnerable. The barbershop leads us to that notion of sharing your woes with your barber.

0:03:17.1 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: And Osorio himself has talked about how when he was 5, his father took him to the barbershop to get his hair cut for the first time, and how it was a rather traumatic experience and he started to cry. But of course, you’re not allowed to cry in the barbershop because this is a rite of passage into manhood. And so the idea that this is also a space where masculinity is supposed to be not only on display, but reinforced was one that he felt very personally.

0:03:42.0 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: The idea of masculinity and of manhood is referenced in so many of the elements and imagery that we find installation. Along with those rim covers in the walls, we also find images of famous Puerto Ricans and Latinos, including baseball players, all of them men. This use of images like hands and naked bodies in what can be easily read as a hyper masculine place and of male socialization is very interesting and may address anxieties and notions of homophobia inside the Nuyorican, Puerto Rican, and the Latino community at large.

0:04:17.1 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: Osorio describes his artistic practice as one defined by contradiction. The flower on the wall, that’s a tattoo that’s blown up into big proportions.

0:04:27.4 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: I find very interesting how he added screens to the mirrors. After you spend your time in the barber, you are then swiveled to look at yourself and approve of what they’ve done. But in the manner in which Osorio has manipulated the mirror, the person sitting in that barber chair would be confronted with scenes of emotion, of men crying, of exhibiting that emotion that contradicts that notion that men don’t cry, that boys don’t cry. So he’s confronting or pushing against that notion of a macho man who cannot express his emotion in a place that seems to socialize you to be that way, to repress your emotions. But it is a place of socialization, of cultural expression. The more you look into it, the more you observe and reflect, you continue to explore those layers of complexity in both cultural expression and gender expression inside the Latino community. Another important sensory element in the installation is the music.

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0:05:36.0 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: What we are listening to are classic salsa songs that are also quite associated with a certain ideal of masculinity.

0:05:43.4 Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank: This was not created for a traditional museum space. So he’s really pushing the boundaries of not only what is art, but where do we find art and who is it for?

0:05:53.9 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: [A] big interest of Osorio is being as close as possible to the community. So when this installation was first exhibited in Hartford, Connecticut, it was in a building that catered to the illusion that you were entering a real barber shop. And so that interest of involving the community in the creation and experiencing the installation is very important in his work. The way he transforms the barbershop, not only with all these objects that we have pointed out, but also including fake plants that add an element of coziness, that hint to that socialization that happens in the barbershop, he truly wants you to reflect upon how the space, once practical, becomes transformed, to be able to communicate so many messages.

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