Transcending Institutional Critique: Pepón Osorio’s Scene of The Crime (Whose Crime?) (1993)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24310/BoLArte.2020.v41i.8097Keywords:
Pepón Osorio, Institutional Critique, Latino, Whitney Biennial 1993, Kitsch, Installation art.Abstract
As part of the controversial 1993 Whitney Biennial, Puerto Rican artist Pepón Osorio recreated the interior of a Nuyorican home in his work Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?). This paper aims to unpack the installation’s critical dimension, to argue that it goes beyond the mere institutional critique. To that end, I will first examine the particular disruption of the aseptic museum’s space prompted by Osorio’s installation. Secondly, I will analyze the artist’s intentional use of Kitsch as a gesture of cultural resistance: through the exaggerated accumulation of objects and imageries, Osorio deftly called into question the conventional systems of visibility that operate within the institutional realm.
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