'9000 cuts'

2026
 

This work began with Yulia Bas's wedding dress, worn seventeen years earlier. After the end of a long relationship, the artist turned to an object that had carried the memory of those years within it. 

The title refers to the approximately nine thousand days spent together.
 

The work unfolds through a performative process of cutting. Spending time with this artefact of her marriage allowed an artist to process and reflect on the memory. Some cuts seemed violent, some very gentle, yet all of them gradually become an act of opening. As the dress is cut, the fabric expands beyond its original form—becoming lighter, more porous, and increasingly impossible to return to what it once was.
 

No final shape was predetermined. Each installation allows the work to unfold differently, making transformation an ongoing process rather than a completed event.
 

As the dress opens, so does the question that lies at the centre of the work: 
when a shared identity comes apart, who remains? If she is no longer a wife, who is she now?

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