Critique and Compassion are “Side by Side” in Osorio’s Work for CCA Biennial

May 10, 2017
by Patti Witten

Race. Class. Determination. The tension and conflict within social systems.

A point of contact between them is empathy. This is the context of Side by Side, an installation by multimedia artist and educator Pepón Osorio, unveiled in April in Rand Hall and on display until May 26.

Osorio is the artist-in-residence for the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) 2016 Biennial Abject/Object Empathies. Osorio’s work often raises the visibility of the toll systemic inequity and social alienation have on individual and community life.

According to CCA Director Stephanie Owens, “Side by Side is at once an intimate portrait, social critique, and compassionate expression of inclusion and persistence.”

The site-specific, sculptural, and media installation tells the story of a local family — a matriarch, her nine grandchildren and great-grandchildren whom she is raising without help from their parents, and their personal experience of the domestic/social systems surrounding them. Constructed in a corner of Rand Hall, the centerpiece of the installation is a house — flipped, wedged between floor and ceiling, and tilted on its peaked roof — with LCD panels for windows, and exterior walls blanketed with lottery tickets. Every element, even the structural column that impales the house, is intentional. In each of the nine windows, an overlapping video displays the matriarch with one of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren standing half submerged in water. Additional video is projected upside-down on two nearby walls, while metal and glass screens partly separate the house and the observer.

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