Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum, museum purchase through the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool and the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program
Pepón Osorio created “El Chandelier” for a performance that explored the life of a Puerto Rican woman living in New York. The fixture is adorned with doll babies, toy bowling pins, palm trees, plastic animals and sculptures of saints—the cheap, brightly colored decorations called chucherías that appeared in “Nuyorican” households in the 1980s. “El Chandelier” appears dazzling and lighthearted, but it demonstrates how the illusion of abundance masks the realities of life in poor urban communities.