[ osorio ]

'No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop' was the artist's over the top version of a Puerto Rican barbershop, installed in a vacant store in the summer of 1994 on Park Street in Hartford's Frog Hollow neighborhood. Osorio used the all-male barbershop, the place where young Puerto Rican boys are typically told not to cry when they get their first haircut, as a vehicle to look at masculinity and machismo. Photographs of Latin men lined the walls, potency powder was 'for sale' in display cases, a video played on the chairs' headrests and in the mirror, showing scenes of men playing, a baby being circumcised, and men crying. The ceilings were silkscreened from enlarged photos of microscopic human sperm. A fish tank held a scene from the Last Supper. Radios and ears adorned the back walls. At the opening a band played and barbers from the community offered free haircuts. The 'barbershop' has traveled to Tokyo, Paris and Atlanta.