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Poem Wedding Dress
1995
56 3/4 x 44 x 12 in. (144.15 x 111.76 x 30.48 cm)
Lesley Dill (New York, 1950 – )
Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley, June 8, 2018 – September 30, 2018, San José Museum of Art.
Your Mind, This Moment: Art and the Practice of Attention, February 17, 2017 - August 17, 2017, Second Fl. North Gallery, San José Museum of Art.
Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley (2018)
Working across sculpture, textile, print, photography, and performance art, Lesley Dill incorporates poetic language directly into her works. In 1990, the artist received from her mother a book of poems by the great American nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson. Dill reprocesses Dickinson’s poems as though they were physical, scattering and draping the words across her forms.
The source of Poem Wedding Dress comes from Dill’s 1994 performance Dada Poem Wedding Dress that honored women victims of AIDS. The performer’s dress was stripped off by her “bachelors”—a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s 1915–23 work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)—to reveal her nude body imprinted with the same words seen on the dress. The performance evoked the harsh despair of women afflicted—stripped bare—by the AIDS crisis
Your Mind, This Moment: Art and the Practice of Attention (2017)
On Lesley Dill’s fortieth birthday, her mother gave her a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Dill said of her experience, “I wasn’t slow enough in my mind at that time to read poetry.” In response to the nineteenth-century American poet’s writing, Dill began to practice meditation and has incorporated Dickinson’s poetry into her work. The text that appears in Poem Wedding Dress comes from Dickinson’s The Soul has Bandaged moments – (360), and the dress takes after Dickinson’s wardrobe. A spinster, the nineteenth-century American poet lived in relative isolation writing poetry, most works never read until after her death. In Dill’s hands, illegible and scattered upon a women’s dress, the words evoke a ghostly presence. The dress represents the body, but the words give the body voice—together generating an experience of sound as well as a visual presence. The source of Poem Wedding Dress comes from Dill’s original performance of Dada Poem Wedding Dress in 1994, honoring women victims of AIDS at a benefit held at Webster Hall in New York. The performer’s dress was stripped off by her “bachelors” only to reveal her nude body printed with the same words; the performance emulated the experience of those women affected, or stripped, by the AIDS crisis. Language in Dill’s work reveals the intimacy of interior thoughts unspoken.
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by Artist (27)
Poem Wedding Dress
Mixed Media (3D)
199556 3/4 x 44 x 12 in. (144.15 x 111.76 x 30.48 cm)
Lesley Dill (New York, 1950 – )
Object Type: Mixed Media (3D)
Medium and Support: Newspaper, thread and ink on cloth
Credit Line: Gift of J. Michael Bewley
Accession Number: 2015.07.08
Exhibition
Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley, June 8, 2018 – September 30, 2018, San José Museum of Art.
Your Mind, This Moment: Art and the Practice of Attention, February 17, 2017 - August 17, 2017, Second Fl. North Gallery, San José Museum of Art.
SJMA Label Text
Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley (2018)
Working across sculpture, textile, print, photography, and performance art, Lesley Dill incorporates poetic language directly into her works. In 1990, the artist received from her mother a book of poems by the great American nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson. Dill reprocesses Dickinson’s poems as though they were physical, scattering and draping the words across her forms.
The source of Poem Wedding Dress comes from Dill’s 1994 performance Dada Poem Wedding Dress that honored women victims of AIDS. The performer’s dress was stripped off by her “bachelors”—a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s 1915–23 work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)—to reveal her nude body imprinted with the same words seen on the dress. The performance evoked the harsh despair of women afflicted—stripped bare—by the AIDS crisis
Your Mind, This Moment: Art and the Practice of Attention (2017)
On Lesley Dill’s fortieth birthday, her mother gave her a book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Dill said of her experience, “I wasn’t slow enough in my mind at that time to read poetry.” In response to the nineteenth-century American poet’s writing, Dill began to practice meditation and has incorporated Dickinson’s poetry into her work. The text that appears in Poem Wedding Dress comes from Dickinson’s The Soul has Bandaged moments – (360), and the dress takes after Dickinson’s wardrobe. A spinster, the nineteenth-century American poet lived in relative isolation writing poetry, most works never read until after her death. In Dill’s hands, illegible and scattered upon a women’s dress, the words evoke a ghostly presence. The dress represents the body, but the words give the body voice—together generating an experience of sound as well as a visual presence. The source of Poem Wedding Dress comes from Dill’s original performance of Dada Poem Wedding Dress in 1994, honoring women victims of AIDS at a benefit held at Webster Hall in New York. The performer’s dress was stripped off by her “bachelors” only to reveal her nude body printed with the same words; the performance emulated the experience of those women affected, or stripped, by the AIDS crisis. Language in Dill’s work reveals the intimacy of interior thoughts unspoken.
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