Keynote Conversation: Pepón Osorio in discussion with Marissa Del Toro

For our annual Keynote Conversation on May 1st, we are honored to have the esteemed multidisciplinary artist, Pepón Osorio, in conversation with Marissa Del Toro, NXTHVN’s assistant director of programs and exhibitions. Puerto Rican born, South Bronx developed, and now Philly based, Osorio was informed by his background in theater and performance as well as his experiences as a child services case worker and professor to pioneer artmaking prioritizing social engagement. For over 35 years, Osorio has advanced critical conversations surrounding race, gender, and identity as well as structural inequalities in the United States healthcare, education, and Pr*son systems. Join us as we discuss Osorio’s origins, ideology, process and newer projects.

Seats will be available on a first come, first serve basis. Doors open at 5:30PM.

ABOUT PEPÓN OSORIO

Best known for his large-scale installations, Pepón Osorio merges conceptual art and community dynamics. Osorio’s work emphasizes the exhibition space as an intermediary between the social architecture of communities and the mainstream art world. He has worked with well over 25 communities across the U.S. and internationally, creating installations based on real life experiences. For over three decades, Pepón Osorio has been presenting work in unconventional places prior to exhibiting in a museum setting, thus exploring the subjectivity of meaning in art and the multiple meanings that these installations achieve depending on their location. Osorio is Carnell Professor at the Tyler School of the Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. His work has been exhibited in El Museo del Barrio, New York (a retrospective); 1993 Whitney Biennial at Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas, Venezuela; Africus Institute for Contemporary Art, Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Santurce, PR; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, Santurce, PR.; PS1, NYC; Menil Collection, Houston Texas; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam, Bienal de Cuba, Habana, Cuba; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Institute of Contemporary Arts, Philadelphia PA.; the 27th. Sao Paulo Bienal, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Modern Art in NYC, New Museum in New York City and storefronts, department stores and homes in many locations throughout the world. Osorio is the recipient of numerous distinctions including the 2001 Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, an Alpert Award in the Arts-Visual Arts, 1999; and a John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2018 United States Artists Fellowship and 2022 Philadelphia’s Cultural Treasures Artists Fellowship among others.

ABOUT MARISSA DEL TORO

Marissa Del Toro is the Assistant Director of Programs and Exhibitions at NXTHVN in New Haven, CT. In both her professional and personal life, she continues to work towards the promotion and advocacy for diverse narratives within art. Since 2021, Del Toro has worked with Museums Moving Forward, a data-driven initiative to support greater equity and accountability in art museum workplaces through coalition-building, research, and advocacy. She is currently co-curator of the traveling exhibition Xican-a.o.x. Body with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Gilbert Vicaro; she has guest curated and written for several institutions including the Latinx Project at NYU, Gagosian 2022 Fall Quarterly, Lehmann Maupin in New York City, and the Mission Cultural Latino Center in San Francisco, CA. She was most recently a 2021-2022 curatorial fellow at NXTHVN, where she co-curated two exhibitions and worked alongside the studio fellows in developing their professional practice. She previously held positions at Phoenix Art Museum from 2018-2020; Santa Barbara Museum of Art from 2017-2018; the Getty Research Institute as a Graduate Intern from 2016-2017; UTSA Art Gallery as the Curatorial Assistant Intern from 2014 to 2015. In July 2015, she participated in the Latino Museum Studies Program at the Smithsonian Latino Center. She graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with her MA in Art History and is originally from Southern California, where she received her BA in Art History from the University of California, Riverside.

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