Divas Ascending at The Kentucky Center

E.V. Day’s Divas Ascending is presented by artwithoutwalls and hosted by The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. This installation of suspended sculptures, featuring retired opera costumes, was originally commissioned by the New York City Opera and shown at Lincoln Center in 2009-2010.

The artist says, “I wanted the sculptures to reflect and refract the specific roles the costumes had played…. I wanted to reanimate those lives and give them a future form.” Day describes the opportunity to work with opera costumes as a natural extension of her artistic practice, since the “recurring themes in my work —explosion, velocity, and spectacle, have an energy that might be termed ‘operatic.’”

Suspended permanently in moments of transition, these Divas are indeed Ascending, transcending tradition at the intersections of various sources and genres. Day’s works are both sculpture and performance, appropriated and invented. The dynamic hybridity of Day’s work is reinforced by its presentation in Louisville as a unique, first-time collaboration between artwithoutwalls and The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts.

Generous support for this artwithoutwalls presentation of Divas Ascending at The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts has been provided by Salomon Contemporary, New York, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. For more information, please visit www.artww.org