En la Barberia no se Llora

En la Barberia no se Llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop). Pepon Osorio. 1994 C.E. Mixed-media installation.

• The Puerto Rico born artist, Pepón Osorio trained as a sociologist and became a social worker in the South Bronx. His work is inspired by each of these experiences and is rooted in the spaces, experiences, and people of American Latino culture, particularly Nuyorican communities
• Osorio's large-scale installations are meant for a local audience, yet they have also been exhibited in mainstream cultural institutions
• Having lived both experiences—that of a Puerto Rican and Nuyorican—Osorio is best known for large-scale installations that address street life, cultural clashes, and the rites of passage experienced by Puerto Ricans in the United States. 
• Created in collaboration with local residents, Osorio engaged the public through conversation, workshops, and artistic collaborations. The art itself is visually lavish—his installations have often been dubbed “Nuyorican Baroque”
• Inspired from his first haircut in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Osorio recreates the space of the barbershop as one that is intensely packed with “masculine” symbols like barber chairs, car seats, sports paraphernalia, depictions of sperm and a boy’s circumcision, phallic symbols, and male action figurines. 
• Osorio boldly challenges the idea of masculinity, and particularly of machismo in Latino communities. 
• These include Puerto Rican flags, religious ornaments, plastic toys, dolls, ribbons, beads, etc., all of which function as a “gesture of cultural resistance,” presented as something universal yet personal.
• The chucherías included in the installation En la barberia no se llora, (a flag, fake foliage, baseballs, framed portraits of famous Latin American and Latino men), serve to localize the work, yet these objects also raise issues of social class expressed here through taste, and the distinction between high and low art—effectively straddling a fine line between cultural celebration and social critique.
• While En la barberia no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop) challenges definitions of masculinity, it also brings up—in a more subtle way—the relationship between machismo and homophobia, violence, and infidelity, and the ways in which popular culture, religion, and politics help craft these identities and issues.