Pepón Osorio, the artist who seeks to redefine convalescence for minorities in the United States

Pepón Osorio cannot forget an argument he had a year ago with a doctor, just an hour before going into surgery. The artist had a hunch that he was developing cancer and told the surgeon so… but he felt that the surgeon minimized how he felt. With the courage required to speak before entering the pre-operation room, Pepón questioned him: “How is it possible that you know more about what’s happening to me, if I’ve been in this body for 69 years?” Armed with a strength that grieving and unheard bodies understand well, he reiterated: “It’s unbelievable that you know more than me. You went to university, but I’ve been carrying this for 69 years.”

Moments like that in his medical journey — after having faced lymphoma and then prostate cancer — as well as the realities faced by the people most neglected by a medical system plagued by inequity are two key factors that shape the most recent exhibition by the prominent Puerto Rican artist, who is based in the city of Philadelphia. The exhibition, titled Convalescence, reveals, with ferocity and courage, the pitfalls and frustrations experienced by patients in the U.S. healthcare system, particularly those from Latino and Black communities.

“I decided to work with patients who’ve had surgery and who, in one way or another, have become hospital statistics,” Pepón notes. “These are the stories that call my attention, because we’re the most forgotten, we’re the least treated and we’re invisible to [the field of] medicine. The number of studies and [obstacles] that we go through are much greater than other ethnic groups.”

Throughout the artist’s career, he has used large-scale installations to present the themes surrounding complex, charged emotions. He seeks to make viewers reflect, while triggering actions for social change.

Convalescence was on display in the lobby of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, at the downtown Philadelphia campus, until November 1. The exhibition acts as a mirror, in which a visitor can recognize the story of thousands more who, like Pepón, know or have traveled the complex web of the U.S. health system.

At the beginning of the installation, an altar of flowers surrounds a teddy bear. There are also written wishes hoping for a “quick recovery.” A scale alludes to the weight loss that told Pepón that something was wrong. For him, this installation is a more autobiographical project than anything he has done in his almost four decades of artistic production. His body of work is generally marked by his broad social concerns.

Convalescence is so personal that Pepón also acts as the narrator. The spectators observe him: he’s a man covered in acupuncture needles and, later on, he’s one of the patients featured in the installation.

The exhibit is assembled as if you’re entering the hospital to visit Andrea, Karen, Alejo, Pepón and Lucía, the patients who are the stars. Their stretchers are adorned with symbols of their lives or their circumstances, such as the pillow that a grandmother gave to her grandson, which acts as an amulet for the patient, or the various figurines that represent the thousands of people waiting for kidney transplants. Through videos that show their faces, each patient describes a dream related to their illness. When the patients speak, their voices overlap like a chorus. And, when they close their eyes, “everyone sleeps at the same time, like in hospitals,” Pepón explains.

At the foot of Pepón’s station, an urn contains a representation of his prostate. The inscription reads: “Over time, you start to lose your body parts. Accepting that you will never be the same is the hardest thing; that is convalescence.”

One of the hardest things for Pepón — between going to and from appointments, meeting with doctors, taking medications and experiencing side effects — was coming to terms with convalescence: “After my interaction with hospitals and doctors, I realized that there’s no such thing as convalescence… that convalescence is a continuous state, like a circle.” As Pepón points out, even though “little by little you can improve, you never return to that space where you were before.” The remnants of diagnoses or illnesses run through the stories of the patients and others represented in the exhibition.

Convalescence intentionally focuses on the experiences of members of Latino and Black communities, groups that have historically been neglected by the U.S. healthcare system and are victims of disparities in access to healthcare. Many members of these communities cannot afford the high cost of medications and treatments.

The U.S. fails people in accessing healthcare. According to a recent study, the national system is the lowest-ranked among 10 developed countries in critical areas, including healthcare access, administrative efficiency, and equity. Through its findings, the report published by The Commonwealth Fund recommends that the medical system eliminate disparities in the delivery of healthcare to low-income people, Blacks, Latinos, Indigenous people and those living in rural areas.

Many of the most needy residents of the United States don’t have health insurance. “These populations often face discrimination and receive lower-quality care,” the report underscores.

“The costs aren’t only financial,” Pepón clarifies. “There are costs that have to do with the body, with our mental state.” He emphasizes that, when we talk about medicine, the word “cost” has a multiplicity of dimensions.

The vulnerability of so many patients and the imbalance of power in the face of the medical field are concerns that Pepón brings to light in this exhibition. After emigrating to New York in 1975 and completing university studies in sociology, in the mid-1980s, he was a social worker with the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) in New York City. Although he didn’t like the way the agency dealt with people’s problems, those nine years of social work left an indelible mark on his participatory art. He has been nurtured by his community — particularly the Latino community, as well as the working class — which has defined his artistic work.

He visited hundreds of homes during his time as a social worker. In his artistic career, this explains Pepón’s view of the needs of others. This empathy has continued to mark his work, which — as in Convalescence — creates space through art to discuss realities that frequently affect the most neglected people, while sparking dialogues about possible solutions.

Today, Pepón is cancer-free. He knocks on wood as he declares this.

Convalescence has also been an exercise in healing for him, as well as a way to highlight the possibilities of alternative medicine (in his case, acupuncture is a complement to his medical treatment) and healing practices that we owe to our ancestors.

For Pepón, the remedies and wisdom that his grandmothers passed down “helped with emotional, physical and perhaps spiritual improvement.” To connect with these ancestral legacies and emphasize other ways of caring for health in the community, the artist promoted various workshops. One involved plant baths — using anamú, mint poleo and epazote — which are used to relieve symptoms and cleanse those who are suffering. Another technique, alcohol baths, includes a mixture of alcohol, eucalyptus, malagueta and menthol, which is always present in Puerto Rican homes to remedy countless ills.

As part of another exhibition, José Ortiz Pagán — an artist who is heavily informed by botany — rescues and shares the knowledge that his grandmother, a healer, passed on to him by offering a medicinal bath workshop. By connecting with this familial and medicinal legacy, he reaffirms that, in his opinion, healing is an integrated process which never ends. It develops in collaboration with other tools.

“What the healers explain,” José tells EL PAÍS, “is that we carry a layer of burdens: our traumas, fatigue, worries. With the intention of a prayer or a thought, the plant bath is poured over the body, [which is] left to dry in the air. It gives us a new emotional beginning.”

For José, Convalescence weaves together larger conversations about accessibility to health and the dignity of patients. He adds that gardens are “libraries and health clinics that can help sustain our well-being from another point of view.”

Another artist who’s collaborating with Convalescence, the writer and community leader Magda Martínez, points out that the exhibition calls on visitors to remember that “we are whole beings and that, to take care of ourselves, we must take care of the many parts of ourselves: the psychological, the spiritual, the physical and the communal. [We need to feel that we’re] part of something bigger.”

For Pepón, the exhibition has been the manifestation of his desire to redefine convalescence as a state. “The convalescence circle isn’t only what traditional medicine explains or what the dictionary wants to explain, because those of us who have gone through the process see that it totally varies.” The artist also adds that the effort to redefine convalescence is also an invitation to rethink how patients define themselves. “I don’t accept that I’m sick: I have a condition. It’s not denial,” Pepón clarifies. “It’s a different way of seeing [yourself] that opens up the possibility of having a very different relationship with your doctor.”

From this act of redefinition springs the faith (and not necessarily a religious one) that Pepón has clung to in order to get better. Something that helps patients to get ahead, the artist reflects, is believing in healing as “a possibility that’s worth holding on to” within the possibilities of the illness or condition you’re suffering from.

“A very dear person gave me the gift of understanding how to have faith about getting better. Now, I don’t blindly depend on medicine. I offer this work to life, hoping that [illness] never happens to me again,” Pepón points out, in one of the texts in Convalescence. In doing so, he encapsulates the persistent desire to get better and the possibility of healing, despite everything.