Pepón Osorio, the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Community Art at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, was recently interviewed by artist and scholar Nicole Fleetwood in MoMA magazine. The two artists discuss MoMA’s acquisition of his installation, Badge of Honor, which explores the relationship between an incarcerated father and his teenage son left at home. Fleetwood curated a major exhibition, Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, for MoMA that featured the works of artists in U.S. prisons and delved into similar themes as Osorio’s. The exhibition was open from September 2020-April 2021. 

Fleetwood and Osorio have a thoughtful and personal conversation about his upbringing, inspirations for Badge of Honor, and the revealing, and often emotionally taxing, process he went through to put it together – probing his relationship with social work and artwork, something that she understands from her own practice. 

Click here to read their interview. 

Photo of Badge of Honor courtesy of Susan Cahan.