My Beating Heart/ Mi corazón latiente. New Museum, June 29 - September 17, 2023. https://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/pepon-osorio-my-beating-heart-em-mi-corazon-latiente-em
Is it me? I have a hard time feeling sorry for Pepón Osorio, or his subjects. Feeling sorry’s not what this show’s about, it’s just what segments of the right-thinking White-thinking art-loving public want to think that it’s about. Osorio’s been doing what you might call interventions among marginalized sections of the Puerto Rican community for the past thirty-odd years:
That’s like saying Michelangelo’s David is deeply invested in the Florentine reaction against Oligarchy: it is, but that’s missing the point. Are these works worthwhile despite the fact that they’re invested in these various issues? Or is it because they’re invested, period? And isn’t it a condition of worthwhile art that it’s invested as a matter of principle?
Visitors to Mi corazón split into two groups. You see a few high school students being dragged about by Teacher: “This is a socially conscious show. It’s good for you. It’s not supposed to be enjoyable. Spinach Art.”
Apart from that, most visitors seem happy—and I’ve never seen such a high proportion of visitors of color in a museum. This is not the show you go to see because you’re woke. It’s the show you go to see because it speaks to you.
It speaks to me. When I first got back to New York I ended in East Harlem with some pretty rough types: junkies, released mental patients, people I must love or I must hate myself. I shared a room with my Puerto Rican girlfriend until her caseworker dropped her from Welfare because she must be living off her rich Anglo boyfriend. So, yeah, it speaks to me. Think of a young man, another young man, standing alert, head turned. Not sure that he can love himself.
WOID XXIII-20