E.V. Day’s work has largely focused on the issue of sexuality and the body. Born in the United States, E.V. Day majored in sculpture for both her undergraduate and postgraduate studios. In many of her works, she takes the idea of exploding sexual stereotypes by fragmenting clothing and resorts to fragmentation of visual symbols, in her reconstruction of the classic symbols of femininity and gender stereotypes. This deconstructionist approach has made her work explosive both in the visual presentation and in the messages she intends to convey.

In the early works, E.V. Day wrapped Barbie Dolls with fabric. By mummifying a traditional symbol of ideal femininity, E.V. Day mocks the ‘eternity’ of the classic icon. Such a witty yet critical approach continued to E.V. Day’s later works. In her remarkable series of installations, Exploding Couture, E.V. Day appropriates the classic symbol of perfect femininity, Marilyn Monroe with her white halter dress, an arranges the dress to make it look as if the forces of the implied fire were so powerful that the garment literally blows up. Numerous remnants in various shapes are fixed onto the ceilings, the walls, as well as the ground with monofilament and steel wires, as if Monroe’s billowing dress and her beau gets were still present. However, E.V. Day’s explosive presentation strikes against, and eventually disintegrates, the numerous desires of the voyeuristic male gaze. The uniquely explosive visual vocabulary allows her to demolish the society’s long-standing stereotype for women. By means of deconstruction and rearranging the dress, she not only attempts to explore ways in which women may reconstruct subjectivities and gender identities in the existing social structure, but also seeks to achieve a sense of ‘transcendence’ similar to that as implied in her work Transporter. Transporter features a silver gown that Marilyn Monroe wore for President John F Kennedy’s birthday party. The dress appears indistinct, as if it was part of the plot in a Sci-Fi movie, in which it was on the ere of disappearing into another patio-temporal dimension. The near transparent visual quality not only invites men and women to look through this breathtakingly beautiful dress with desire, but also signifies breakthrough and transcendence of the existing structure.