MHYSA - NEVAEH LIVE

MHYSA, artist E. Jane’s underground popstar diva alter ego, performs songs from her latest album, NEVAEH, streamed live from MoMA PS1 on the one-year anniversary of its release.

Joined by frequent musical collaborator lawd knows, and styled by Women’s History Museum, MHYSA performs within a site-specific set constructed in conversation with Jane’s video installation MHYSA-NEVAEH LIVE (Behind the scenes) (2020) on view in This Longing Vessel. The installation includes video projected onto a wall of mirrors inspired by the architecture of dance studios, featuring footage of MHYSA preparing for NEVAEH Live with artist and choreographer Jumatatu Poe, along with audience footage of an early iteration of her live show in Paris. The set for this live-streamed performance will similarly feature choreography by Jumatatu Poe, and stand-alone dance studio mirrors, replacing the physical audience and giving MHYSA a space to perform for herself—an act of self-healing and bodily reclamation for MHYSA, as a Black woman performer. MHYSA, the diva, is able to turn inward and became the primary audience and consumer of her own image on stage, filling the void COVID restrictions have created for live performance at large.

An interview between MHYSA and curator, artist, and writer, An Duplan, staged in MHYSA’s green room, concludes the program.

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This performance is presented in conjunction with This Longing Vessel, The Studio Museum in Harlem’s annual Artist-in-Residence exhibition, held at MoMA PS1 while the Studio Museum constructs a new building on the site of its longtime home on West 125th Street.