BUY HERE

Where there’s love overflowing is a publication by E.Jane published by GenderFail in conjunction with the exhibition E Jane; Where there’s love overflowing, April 1-May 14, 2022 at The Kitchen. Where there’s love overflowing expands on the exhibition themes based on the powerful ballad “Home”, originally sung by Stephanie Mills as Dorothy in The Wiz in its Broadway premiere in 1975 and includes images and text featured in the exhibition. The publication also features new commissioned essay, TITLE HERE, by artist and writer Hannah Black, written exclusively for the publication.

From The Kitchen:
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.

E. Jane (b.1990, Bethesda, MD) 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 new 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. They have performed at The Kitchen, MoCADA and MoMA PS1 as one half of sound duo SCRAAATCH alongside collaborator chukwumaa. They have exhibited their solo work in group shows in the US and internationally. Their installation Lavendra/Recovery has been shown as solo exhibitions entitled "Lavendra'' both at American Medium in Brooklyn, NY in 2017 and at Glasgow International 2018 in Scotland. In 2015 they wrote the widely-circulated NOPE manifesto, which was recently featured in Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism (2020 Verso). They were a 2016 recipient of the Wynn Newhouse Award, a 2019-2020 artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and are currently a Harvard College Fellow in New Media as a part of SCRAAATCH.

Visit their website here