Enlightenment from El Chandelier

Meet artist Pepón Osorio and learn more about his amazing chandelier in Ądel Corazón!, SAAM's educational webzine about Latino art for teachers and students.

Osorio considers chandeliers, which can be found in even the poorest apartments of Spanish Harlem and the South Bronx, to be symbols of the dreams, hopes, humor, and hardships of Puerto Ricans living in the New York barrio.

For him the swags of pearls, plastic babies, palm trees, monkeys, and other mass-produced items embody immigrant popular culture of the 1950s and 1960s, when the majority of New York Puerto Ricans immigrated from the island.

The chandelier also has personal associations. Its encrusted surface recalls the elaborately decorated cakes Osorio's mother made during his childhood in Puerto Rico.

Source: Virginia Mecklenburg. Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Pepon Osorio, born 1955, El Chandelier, 1988, functional metal and glass chandelier with plastic toys and figurines, glass crystals, and other objects, 60 7/8 x 42 in., Museum purchase in part through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program.