On View: April 1-May 14, 2022
512 West 19th Street
Opening day hours:
April 1, 5 pm-8 pm
Time:
May 10–13: 11 am–2 pm. From 2 pm to 6 pm, the exhibition will be closed for performance rehearsals. Visitors are invited to eavesdrop on rehearsals from the lobby.
New York–based artist E. Jane envisions an exhibition as a score, presenting digital drawings, gouache wall paintings, and sculptural video installation surrounding a central, empty stage.
These works draw upon the artist’s archive of performances of the powerful ballad "Home," originally sung by Stephanie Mills as Dorothy in The Wiz in its Broadway premiere in 1975. The song’s lyrics reclaim the idea of a home full of love as one of your own imagination. Jane considers its relevance to generations of Black femme divas from Diana Ross in the film adaptation of The Wiz, to Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, and Jazmine Sullivan. Within this expansive timeline, Jane pursues how love is embodied and replicated in archival spaces, inserting their own version of “Home” by their performance persona MHYSA—an underground popstar diva who examines the labor and potency of Black celebrity. The exhibition encompasses a residency for a culminating performance event by MHYSA and additional artists on May 14; during rehearsals, the exhibition will be closed to the public who will be invited to eavesdrop from the lobby.
Organized by Lumi Tan, Senior Curator, and Sienna Fekete, Curatorial Fellow.
BIO
E. Jane is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. Inspired by Black liberation and womanist praxis, their work incorporates digital images, video, text, performance, sculpture, installation, and sound design. E. Jane’s work explores safety and futurity as it relates to Black femmes, as well as how Black femmes navigate/negotiate space in popular culture and networked media. Since 2015, Jane has been developing the performance persona MHYSA, an underground popstar for the cyber resistance. MHYSA operates in Jane’s Lavendra/Recovery (2015–)—an iterative multimedia installation—and out in the world. Jane considers this project a total work of art—or Gesamtkunstwerk—that honors and examines the life of the Black diva and of Black femmes in popular culture. In 2018, MHYSA followed her critically acclaimed debut, fantasii, with a live EU/US tour. Highlight performances include the ICA and Cafe OTO in London, and Rewire in The Hague. Her second album NEVAEH came out in February 2020 on Hyperdub records in London. E. Jane received their MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, and a BA in Art History with minors in English and Philosophy from Marymount Manhattan College in New York in 2012. E. Jane has also performed at The Kitchen, MoCADA, and MoMA PS1 as one-half of the sound-performance duo SCRAAATCH; exhibited their solo work in dozens of international institutions and galleries, from MoMA PS1 and Studio Museum 127 to MCA Chicago and IMT Gallery and Edel Assanti in London; written the widely circulated NOPE manifesto, featured in Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism; won the 2016 Wynn Newhouse Award; and have been a 2019–2020 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. They are a Harvard College Fellow in New Media as a part of SCRAAATCH.
FUNDING SUPPORT & CREDITS
E. Jane: Where there's love overflowing is made possible with generous support from Agnes Gund and Olivier Berggruen & Desiree Welsing; annual grants from Open Society Foundations, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, Marta Heflin Foundation, and Cowles Charitable Trust; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The performance evening is made possible with endowment support from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust; annual grants from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Howard Gilman Foundation, Marta Heflin Foundation, and The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Season programming is made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors and The Kitchen Leadership Fund. To learn more, click here.
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