Transformation Parlor

Abstract

Transformation Parlor is my simulacrum of a Victorian sitting parlor. I premiered it in 2000 at Wave Hill, a non-profit cultural institution in the Bronx, New York, housed in a grand residence built in 1927 in the Georgian Revival style. With the rise of mass production in the Victorian period, which coincided with the Industrial Revolution, the growing middle class acquired the purchasing power to furnish their homes with affordable mass-produced objects inspired by the furnishings of the wealthy. Seeking to proclaim their social status, the members of this newly enshrined middle class decorated their homes with elaborately patterned fabrics, wall coverings, upholstered furniture, and rugs that radiated the image of luxury. I call these surfaces “symbolic skins.” The postindustrial culture that we inhabit today, in which we are saturated with symbolic skins of all kinds, is rooted in this period. My Victorian parlor, in this respect, is a mirror of ourselves.