Staffpicks

E.V. Day’s ‘Divas Ascending’

Kentucky Center

501 W. Main St. • 584-7777

www.artww.org

While most sculptors use materials like clay, wire, wood or random odds and ends, E.V. Day’s medium is women’s clothing and old costumes. “I make sculptures that transform familiar icons of women’s empowerment and entrapment into new objects that confound conventional readings of these clichés, and constellate meaning in a range of emotions: anxiety, ecstasy, liberation and release,” Day says. The Kentucky Center main lobby has probably never seen so much fishing line as will be used to hang Day’s eight-piece installation of retired opera costumes, arranged in life-like positions and suspended from the ceiling. Originally commissioned for the Lincoln Center and presented by Louisville nonprofit artwithoutwalls, “Divas Ascending” recycles the elaborate attire of memorable characters like Carmen, Violetta and Don Giovanni and recreates these characters minus one thing — a body.