Pepón Osorio’s “Badge of Honor” Acquired by MoMA, Now on View
The installation piece Badge of Honor by Professor Pepón Osorio, which has toured internationally since 1995, was recently acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and is now on view for the first time as part of a major museum’s collection.
Called an “authentic documentary” that “addresses universal questions about who wins when the power of individual love confronts the impersonality of the system” by the Los Angeles Times, Badge of Honor tells a real family’s story through two adjacent rooms: a teenage boy’s ornately decorated room and his father’s bare prison cell. These two spaces are linked by video projections of father and son—whom Osorio found in collaboration with the New Jersey penal system—speaking to each other. During this conversation, the two share their thoughts and feelings of loneliness and isolation.
“Over the past twenty-five years, Badge of Honor has traveled the world, from first opening in a storefront in Newark, NJ to as far as South Africa,” said Osorio. “I’m glad MoMA recognizes the importance of the work and I hope the piece continues to widen the conversation about incarceration.”