Art & Art History
Voices: Pep n Osorio
![](https://stage.cada.uic.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Pepon-Osario.jpg)
Pep n Osorio
UIC Educational, Communication, and Social Work Building
1040 West Harrison Street
Originally from Puerto Rico, Pep n Osorio (born 1955) has lived and worked in the South Bronx since 1975. His performances and installations engage the visual richness of Puerto Rican culture to create baroque environments that confront difficult realities of contemporary existence with humor and subtlety. Osorio has collaborated with choreographer and performance artist Meri n Soto since 1983, creating a body of work that explores Latino popular expressions, exposes cultural stereotypes, and affirms Puerto Rican cultural identity.
Osorio has received numerous grants, commissions, and awards from a variety of institutions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and New York Foundation for the Arts. He has exhibited widely at the Whitney Biennial, New York; the Cleveland Institute of Art; and Real Art Ways, Hartford, Connecticut. In 1991 his work was the subject of a major retrospective at El Museo del Barrio, New York. He earned a BFA at the Universidad Interamericana, Puerto Rico, and an MFA from Columbia University, New York.