Bombshell
1999

Bombshell is part of a series of installations entitled Exploding Couture (1999-2002) which represent, according to E.V. Day, female figures “extracting themselves from the props of social conventions.” In each installation, a spectacular evening dress, cut into hundreds of pieces, is suspended in midair by an elaborate system of monofilament lines attached to the floor and ceiling with turnbuckles. The dresses appear to be frozen in the midst of a violent explosion. For Bombshell, Day created an 8-foot-high reproduction of the white halter dress immortalized by Marilyn Monroe in the movie, The Seven Year Itch (1955). This work deliberately confuses sex and militarism, orgasm and detonation, invoking the 1950s epithet for Monroe: blond bombshell.