The Eighth Day Dress focuses on a late Southern Italy tradition for newlywed couples who, on the eighth day, had a photograph taken to commemorate their first public outing. Eight days signified the couple’s cultural rite of passage to re-enter society, as this was thought to be the amount of time that allowed the act of consummation to be settled. 

 

The fashionable dresses and suits of the couples likely came from their dowry, and in two photographs of this collection, the artist includes her own grandmothers. 

 

The last two photographs are of the artist in her grandmother’s dress, gloves, and accessories to signify her own right of passage as an independent and consummated woman of self-awareness.

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Photographic Collection and Performance, 2013