Transformation Parlor

In conjunction with Carol Sun's article, "Transformation Parlor," we initiate a new series of artist's projects in Art Journal. Sun provided four postcards See, Look, Read, and Think, which were originally produced for an installation at Wave Hill, New York. Each copy of Art Journal contains one of these.

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.

Symbolic skins are the surfaces that we encounter in our daily lives--on the surfaces of our bodies, in our homes, at work, and on the street. They can be static: tattoos, clothes, paintings, signs, packages, advertisements; they can also be dynamic: digital billboards, LED signs, images on television screens, animated greetings on ATMs, flashing banner ads on the Web. Symbolic skins communicate individual and social, private and public identities. They are multilayered, exchangeable, and sometimes inscrutable. In contemporary society, we are saturated with them. In the morning, when I leave for work, I may be a b-ball girl emblazoned with Nike's swoosh, which has been designed to commodify, promote, and sell a certain lifestyle. During the day, I am exposed to information on television and computer screens; advertisements on milk cartons, billboards, and cross town buses; and identities proclaimed by what people wear and how they adorn the surfaces of their bodies. And in the evening, I myself may choose to assume the mantle of a Versace woman and the identity that this skin projects. Because we are exposed to so many symbolic skins at such a rapid rate during the course of a day, it has become increasingly difficult to reflect on how they mediate our sense of self and our relationships to others and to communities. How we see, look, read, and think about images and their relationship to our lives in this cacophony of skins has become extraordinarily confounding. This is the context in which I made Transformation Parlor.

The Victorian character of the parlor has a transformative effect on many visitors, inside, they may "pause," the present, relax, and move back in time. The symbolic skins they encounter function as portals to another era; if one gives oneself up to them, one may move fluidly between the past and present. But giving oneself up to the parlor requires an investment of time and energy, in which visitors slow down and reflect on what and how they see.

To enter the parlor is comforting at first, for the room appears to be inviting. Elegantly patterned wallpaper covers the walls, from which hang a collection of decorative dinner plates and a gold-framed mirror. Gauzy pale blue curtains hang over the windows and flutter in the breeze. In the center of the room, an ornately woven rug lies on the meticulously polished hardwood floor. On this rug are four elaborately carved wooden chairs upholstered with luxuriously patterned damask. Although the furnishings are formal, the plates ask to be examined, the curtains ask to be touched, the chairs ask to be sat in, and the rug asks to be trod on. There are no televisions, computers, or portable electronic devices to distract you.

But appearances are deceiving. If one takes the time to look at the room and its contents closely, its symbolic skins, each of which communicates its own discrete narrative, begin to speak. The curtains and the mirror quietly encourage visitors to discover these narratives. On them I have applied my monogram emblem: "See. Look, Read, Think." At an initial glance, the calligraphic monogram looks like a flowery collection of decorative marks. But if one takes the time to see, look, read, and think, the symbolic skins in the room have the potential to inspire transformation. The wallpaper, for example, is silkscreened not with botanical or abstract imagery, as one might expect, and as one might see unless one really looks, but with a padlock-and-chain pattern. This symbol, which I have also painted onto dishes and embroidered onto fabrics, is one of my favorites. I live on the Brooklyn waterfront, and when I walk through my neighborhood, I notice the profusion of padlocks and chains used to secure property and safeguard people. Locks signify both safety (when I lock something up or lock myself in, I feel protected) and fear (I simultaneously communicate my fear that someone may violate my things or myself). In this respect, locks, which are not necessarily physical objects, but may be instead codes or passwords that point to what we want to safeguard.