Art of the Hive

Dill describes the piece on her website: “This dress, Dada Poem Wedding Dress, was made for the Dada Ball held in New York City on October 12th, 1994 at Webster Hall. The event was a benefit for Visual Aids and Housing Works. In this performance I wanted to talk about our era of Aids and also the theme of the Dada Ball by using the metaphor of a woman wearing a dress. The idea was inspired by Duchamp’s “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even”. The dress is a brown paper dress painted white and stamped with the words of the Emily Dickinson poem, “The Soul Has Bandaged Moments”. I chose a virginal white dress as a reminder of the many women who are HIV positive, and as a symbol of the incredible loss of innocence that awareness of early morality has brought us.”