Collection
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Contemporary Art

Fear and Denial

Pepón Osorio

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

The proportions of this piece by the prominent installation artist Pepón Osorio are rather ambiguous: the two giant stuffed cats seem to be too large for the narrow table on which they sit. This incongruity reflects the artist’s recollections of visiting his mother’s apartment, filled with knickknacks and figurines, when he was an art student. The objects were in sharp contrast with the aesthetic values of the art world he was entering, and his conflicting feelings of repulsion and attraction assumed giant dimensions in his mind.

Caption

Pepón Osorio (Puerto Rican, born 1955). Fear and Denial, 1997. Mixed media, 92 x 96 x 32 in. (233.7 x 243.8 x 81.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr., by exchange, 2003.5. © Pepón Osorio. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Title

Fear and Denial

Date

1997

Medium

Mixed media

Classification

Sculpture

Dimensions

92 x 96 x 32 in. (233.7 x 243.8 x 81.3 cm)

Credit Line

Bequest of William K. Jacobs, Jr., by exchange

Accession Number

2003.5

Rights

© Pepón Osorio

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Frequent Art Questions

  • What is the connection between large orange cats and the words "fear" and "denial" on pendants hanging from a gold chain that is connected?

    In the work of Pepon Osorio, the cats comes from the domestic aesthetic of his mother's house, as she would have kitsch objects like these stuffed cats as decoration. And the words "fear" and "denial" play as visual metaphors for the power of that which is not acknowledged. Feelings that often are present in households, or even in the Latino community of New York, but are often never addressed.

  • Why did the artist use cat figurines in this work?

    The artist explains that these figures remind him of the sort of kitschy knick-knacks he would see around his mother's house when he would leave art school to visit.
    For him, these figurines were the opposite of the "high art" that he was studying in school. So, he created a "high art" version of the tchotchkes.

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Artists and makers

Pepón Osorio

1 work in the collection