Separation from Home: Pepón Osorio & “Badge of Honor” January 5, 2018
Installation view of both rooms of Pepón Osorio’s Badge of Honor, on view in HOME—So Different, So Appealing.
A view of the boy’s elaborately decorated bedroom in Pepón Osorio’s Badge of Honor.
A view of the father’s cell in Pepón Osorio’s Badge of Honor.
For many, the idea of a perfect home is far from reality. In Badge of Honor, a two-room installation on view in the exhibition HOME—So Different, So Appealing, Pepón Osorio examines what “home” is like for a family separated by a father’s incarceration.
Telling a real family’s story, Badge of Honor features a teenage boy’s bedroom—teeming with pop-culture objects from the 1990s—next to his father’s austere prison cell. The rooms are linked by video projections of the actual father and son, who talk to each other across these spaces.
So Close, So Far
During the conversation, each shares intimate thoughts and feelings of loneliness and isolation. The boy says at one point, “Dad, I would be willing to give up anything just to have you home,” and lists the things in his room that he would trade for his father’s presence—a reminder that home doesn’t have to be a physical place, but can be based on the relationships with those you love.
Hit “play” for a closer look at Badge of Honor.
See more in “HOME—So Different, So Appealing,” on view in the Law Building through January 21.
