I’m performing StarQuest, my performance-lecture on Dance Moms, competition dancers on TikTok, and generative AI on Wednesday, May 6th at 8 PM at Roulette in Brooklyn, co-presented by Harvestworks, followed by a conversation with Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Tickets are here.

This week is also the last week to see my exhibition StarPower at bitforms gallery in downtown NYC. We’re having a closing reception for the show’s last hours this Saturday, May 2, from 5–8 PM.

Come hang for a drink, RSVP here.

save if you miss the og dance moms,

yours truly, 𝑀𝒶𝓎𝒶

🍓 ⋆ 🎂 🎀 𝒻🌸𝓇 𝓎😍𝓊 𝓅𝒶𝑔𝑒 🎀 🎂 ⋆ 🍓

Maya Man

StarPower

Opening reception: Thursday, March 19, 6-8 PM

On view: March 19-May 2, 2026

bitforms, 131 Allen Street, NYC

This is my first solo in NYC! I’ve been living in the sparkly, surreal world of the central piece StarQuest for a while… I see this show as the season finale for this body of work :*

Hope to see you,

Maya

I will be in Los Angeles next week for a performance-lecture and solo exhibition, both focused on my latest body of work around American competition dance culture and generative AI. Would love to see you!

StarQuest

Performance-lecture: Saturday, February 28, 2026, 7:00–9:00 PM

L.A. Dance Project, 2245 E. Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90021

Get Tickets

Co-presented bitforms gallery, SOOT gallery, and the Future Humans program at the Berggruen Institute, this is the west coast premiere of StarQuest, an installation and performance-lecture. The performance draws on the reality television series Dance Moms and my experience growing up as a competition dancer to reflect on the aesthetics of optimization, the advent of generative AI, and the staging of the self on social media.

StarQuest begins at 7:00 p.m., with my performance at 8:00 p.m., followed by a conversation between myself and curator Alice Scope.

StarQuest was first co-presented by Triple Canopy and Feral File in New York City in November 2025 at Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center.

StarBound

Opening reception: Thursday, February 26, 2026, 6:00–8:00 PM

SOOT, 3121 W Temple St Suite B, Unit 8, Los Angeles, CA 90026

The performance is complemented by my solo exhibition StarBound at SOOT, my second exhibition with the gallery. My first was in Tokyo in 2022. I’m very excited to return with this body of work.

I love LA. I miss it a lot and am always sooooo happy to travel back. There will be a lot happening that week around Frieze.

Here are some events/shows I also recommend that week:

February 22: Off-Platform: Screening of two films by Alice Bucknell and Lou Fauroux at Now Instant. Curated by Alice Scope.

February 24: Drifella at El Cid

February 26 to 28: ENZO Art Fair, many downtown galleries I really like are showing here… I’m curious!

Through March 14: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Deep Fake, Hoffman Donahue, Beverly Hills.

Through March 20: What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem, presented by the Julia Stoschek Foundation at the Variety Arts Theater

I’ll also probably go to Frieze and Felix.

Can’t wait to try the Katseye Erewhon smoothie…

Thanks for reading. May the stars align.

The end,

Maya

StarQuest, produced completely with generative AI models, is a body of work that takes up the tropes and aesthetics of American competitive dance, specifically drawing on my own experience growing up as a competition dancer and the cult reality television series Dance Moms.

StarQuest, my online solo exhibition with Feral File, opens next week on Thursday, November 20th at 12pm ET.

This work first began with an essay that I wrote for Not Here to Make Friends zine, out now in Issue 3. I’m publishing the essay for the first time online, with IMAGES (screenshots of mine), below. Please read on if you’re interested…

xoxo,

Maya

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StarQuest: Dance Moms, Social Media, and Abby Lee Miller as The Algorithm

Winning isn’t Everything, It’s the Only Thing! exclaims the bold, framed, red and black poster that hangs on the dance studio’s walls. Similarly styled phrases ornament the mirrored room at every angle: If You Work as a Team, You WIN as a Team! If you Make a Mistake - Admit it. Learn from it. And NEVER repeat it. The camera hovers over six small girls, each outfitted in bright, two-piece dancewear, as they twirl across the screen. It is 2011, and this is the pilot episode of Dance Moms, a Lifetime reality TV-show that invites viewers inside the glitter and drama of the high-intensity competition dance world.

Dance Moms revolves around tyrannical dance coach and choreographer Abby Lee Miller, who runs her eponymous dance company out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Every week, Miller, the “dance moms,” and their daughters, journey to a new dance competition to show off a set of rehearsed routines in hopes of winning their category’s highly coveted first place award. There are four moms and six daughters in the original cast: Melissa with Maddie and Mackenzie, Christi with Chloe, Kelly with Brooke and Paige, and Holly with Nia. As I read this list of names, I hear Abby Lee Miller’s voice screaming them, her pointed finger waving in sync with every admonishment.

This is how a classic episode plays out. Picture you are watching at 10x speed:

Abby presents her loathed “pyramid,” where she ranks the girls by taping up their headshots in a tiered formation. Maddie is at the top, AGAIN. Cue talking-head shots of the non-Maddie mothers complaining. The company rehearses a new set of dances for this week’s competition titled something along the lines of “Starpower,” “Starbound,” or “StarQuest.”

When the weekend arrives, the girls are done up in fake eyelashes, rhinestone earrings, sheer tights, and shimmering two piece costumes. The girls perform. The moms argue. A dancer is injured, hurting, or sick. She cries. She is told to stop crying. The team does not perform as well as Miller had hoped. She makes the girls feel ashamed. The team returns to Pittsburgh.

I am away from my computer, so the next episode starts playing automatically, and the cycle repeats again.

Like so much reality television — but especially those on Lifetime in the early 2010s—watching this show inspires a mixture of intrigue and horror. It’s a car crash happening in slow, sparkly motion: gleaming glass flying through the air with every aerial and high kick. The show’s meteoric rise in popularity can be attributed to how it showcased true talent alongside the theatrics endemic to docuseries dramas. When Dance Moms first aired, the dancers, all young girls, were between the ages of six and thirteen. This gives an uncanny quality to their interspersed “talking head” interviews. I imagine the adult interviewer as a ghost in the machine implied behind the camera, puppeteering the dancer with leading prompts. “I love dancing, but I don’t want to go on Broadway. All I want to do is stay home and eat chips,” confesses Mackenzie, age six, in an interview during Season 1 Episode 4.

Unlike other reality television shows that focused on adults, Dance Moms immediately appealed to kids— especially to those like myself, who danced in a competitive company. Like the girls on Dance Moms, I grew up in Pennsylvania. My hometown, Mechanicsburg, sits at the center of the state, well outside the radius of any possible cultural bleed from Pennsylvania’s two biggest cities. I spent nearly every night after school at my local studio, training in classes ranging from ballet to jazz to hip hop. I watched myself grow up in the studio’s floor to ceiling mirrors. I wanted so badly to be good, but even more than that, I wanted so badly to be liked.

Dancers are trained to hold their bodies with the expectation that they will be perceived and judged. As performers, they develop a cybernetic relationship between themselves and their audience. Success on stage, quantified as a high scoring routine, means that the dancer not only performs an impressive set of complicated tricks, twists, and turns, but that she also makes it look both effortless and beautiful. A dancer’s energy should be magnetic on stage.

She should be charming.

She should be smiling!

These are guiding principles in the world of competition dance. These are also guiding principles in the world of social media.

I often wonder if this is why I felt so comfortable when I first started posting online. Initially on YouTube, then Facebook, and eventually, Instagram. The sense of performance that these platforms encouraged, the quantifiable feedback delivered in the form of likes, comments, and followers, felt natural to me. It was a familiar experience, to operate in anticipation of judgement. Posting felt like performing choreography.

This has been widely recognized as a feminine-coded experience; in Ways of Seeing, John Berger declares that, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself.” In Dance Moms, Abby Lee Miller often encourages her preteen dancers to adopt this mindset. Under harsh fluorescent lights, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling mirrors, she reminds them that “when you’re on that stage, they’re all watching you,” and that “the judges see everything from your head to your toes.” In a notebook I kept during my first year of high school in 2011, a doodle of mine reads “DANCE like everybody is watching.”

It is traditional for dancers to begin training and performing at a young age, usually in the single digits. I started taking ballet classes at age three. It is impossible for me to remember the first time I ever stepped on stage, just as I cannot remember the first time I saw myself on screen. Imagining myself being watched and adjusting accordingly has always felt like a condition of living for me, rather than a discrete experience traceable to any specific source. “I’m a perfectionist,” star Dance Moms dancer Maddie Ziegler, who today maintains 13.2 million followers on Instagram, repeats in interviews throughout the show. When success within a system relies on your ability to contort your own body to adhere to an impossible paradigm, how can a young dancer be anything else?

The imposed pursuit of perfection comes up often in descriptions of the “young girl’s experience.” In Tiqqun’s controversial text, Preliminary Materials Toward the Theory of the Young-Girl, they declare: “THE YOUNG-GIRL RESEMBLES HER PHOTO.” They push on,

“Insofar as her appearance entirely exhausts her essence, as her representation does her reality, the Young-Girl is that which is entirely expressible, perfectly predictable, and absolutely neutralized.”

The ideal competition dancer operates like a virtual simulation, performing her routine flawlessly over and over again. Her ability to execute this performance constitutes her “essence.” Kendall Vertes, a dancer who enters during Season 2 of the show, confesses, “I feel so much pressure to get it perfect, every single time.”

Over the past several years, social media platforms have been scrutinized for damaging teen girls’ mental health. In February of 2023, The New York Times reported on the CDC’s findings that “America’s teen girls are engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence and trauma.” Searching for a cause in this spike in “teen girl sadness,” many point to social media as the primary source to blame.

Re-watching Dance Moms now (and to a small extent living Dance Moms before), I wonder if this attitude too conveniently positions social media as a scapegoat. Is social media causing this issue or rather exaggerating a pre-existing cultural concern? The way many people feel using social media aligns with the way young girls, and more precisely competition dancers, are conditioned to feel early on in their lives. I have been chasing perfection inside and out long before I logged on to any platform.

In the second episode of Dance Moms, titled “Wildly Inappropriate,” Miller choreographs a dance to the song “Electricity.” When she reveals the girls in their costumes, the mothers stiffen, commenting that it looks “too sexy.” “They look like prosti-tots,” says Christi, Chloe’s mom, in a talking head interview. When Miller asks Chloe about the costume, she replies “I love it!” and strikes a pose.

To many adults, these costumes and the routine’s choreography clearly over sexualizes this group of preteen girls. But to the girls, it’s pure fun. As they dance, dutifully performing choreography that includes butt slapping and the repeated, synchronized opening and closing of their legs, a pop singer coos over the soundtrack: “Can you feel it? Can you take it? Baby it’s so electric, so come and play with me.”

“My Maddie doesn’t even know what sexy means” insists the eight year old’s mother Melissa, “she just is dancing cute and shaking her little butt, and she just enjoys it.” Is it possible to love something and recognize how it is harming you at the same time? In her essay “Britney Spears Was Never in Control,” Tavi Gevinson writes,

“Even young women who are not megafamous have typically picked up on what makes them appear valuable by the age of 15. Their capacity to perpetuate these standards doesn’t mean they are not also victims of these standards. If anything, it shows how girls’ bodies and sexuality are so deeply regulated by a society that despises women and fetishizes youth that some of us learned how to carry out its work all on our own.”

When I was fifteen years old, I saw dance as my greatest passion, a self-motivated pursuit that I earnestly enjoyed. I felt like an athlete in my sequinned-skirts and jazz shoes, not a showgirl. But now that I am older, I see how blurry the line between those two categories became in the competition dance universe. Thinking about it in hindsight elicits a sense of shame, rooted not specifically in the costumes, choreography, or pop song soundtracks, but in the way this slice of my biography clearly exposes me as a “girl.” A label I quickly learned situates itself in direct conflict with my desire to be perceived as “smart.”

In high school, I posted a picture to Instagram of myself performing a solo on stage at StarQuest dance competition. In it, my hands stretch my leg up to my head, positioning my body in a standing split. A friend of my boyfriend at the time photoshopped my boyfriend’s face between my legs and sent the altered image around to him and his friends. They showed it to me and laughed. I told myself to laugh with them too.

Despite my genuine passion for the pursuit, with over a decade of distance from my last dance competition, I now clearly see how that environment taught me to render myself consumable. It trained me to recognize that there was not power, but capital, to be gained as an object of desire. It groomed me to be the perfect social media user: one who can post and make it look effortless, seamlessly embodying the performance qualities required of the online stage.

Already, many parallels have been drawn between the experience of girlhood and being online. In Alex Quicho’s Wired essay “Everyone Is a Girl Online,” she asserts,

“To wish to be perceived, desired, and rewarded for cultivating that desire is the default setting for participating in digital culture, making all of us ‘girls online’ regardless of gender.”

“The Algorithm” makes us all “competition dancers” online regardless of skill. As I scroll, I see every person I follow aiming to post with perfectly pointed toes and eye-catching grand jetés.

It’s been over a decade since the end of my competition dance career. Rewatching Dance Moms, I now see Abby Lee Miller as “The Algorithm” itself. Colloquially, people use the phrase “The Algorithm” to refer to software-based systems that choose what content rises to the top of social media feeds. Miller punishes her dancers for any performance imperfections. She reminds the girls to “smile at the judges.” She ranks her dancers in a pyramid formation every week based on a mysterious mixture of behavior, competition scores, appearance, and attitude. She entices them with the potential future of “becoming a star.”

Social media is StarQuest Dance Competition, rendering its user an aspiring star performing her solo on stage. Picture her: arms outstretched, reaching for the top of the pyramid. Pirouetting forever. She spins on her toes in an infinite loop on screen.

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I’ve usually only written here about HEART, but I’ve always also meant to write some notes on my own work and practice when it makes sense too, so I’m starting to do that now…

This is the last week that my piece A Realistic Day In My Life Living In New York City will be on view on the Whitney museum’s website, where it has run 24 times a day on the hour (exactly 2pm, 3pm, etc.) for nearly a year. It’s been very special to receive messages from friends who have caught the work, intentionally or not, running over top of whichever page they happen to be visiting on whitney.org.

If you want to catch it, set an alarm for the minute before the hour you want to view and load the website then. It runs for 30 seconds when the clock hits exactly XX:00.

This work is the first commission for the Whitney’s new On The Hour program curated by Christiane Paul. When invited to create a work for this very specific context, I started thinking about how we experience and document time online, specifically through social media platforms. Eventually, I began to focus in on the “day in my life” video genre, popularized in its recognizable short form format on TikTok.

A lot of my work deals with text, so I naturally paid close attention to the language that people use to talk about their days through these videos. I watched and saved hundreds of TikToks, all set in New York City, where people (mostly, but not all, young women) narrate their day to their phone. In the process of making the work, I also made a short video study that showcases a subset of the primary dataset I created.

Watching “day in my life” videos became an exact-time treasure hunt. I got a hit when a video creator happened to mention a precise time of day. Unsurprisingly, strange hours (like 3 am, 4 am) were the hardest to source. But luckily, I managed to find some edge cases. Thank you to the people posting clips from the club or waking up for their internship in the morning news.

After watching so many, I realized that, crucially, these videos are powered not only by the narrator, but also by their audience: the mass of voices that shout from, in my mental model of TikTok’s UI, beneath the primary video. Representative comments on DIML videos include: “Dream girl dream world🤍,” “ur vids r so comforting ily,” and “How can I also live like this.”

The final work unfolds as a call and response: Heavy, hot pink-wrapped text first writes out what someone says that they were doing at the exact time that you are viewing the work. There are between three and twelve options for every hour of the day. At 9:00 AM you might see: “It was a beautiful morning. I did a 9:00 AM reformer class that’s fifty minutes long.”, “Today I was off from work though, so I went to pilates at 9:00. I slept in a little, had a ginger shot, applied sunscreen,” or “Here I am, walking through Soho, casually eating a macaron at like 9:00 AM.” This is followed by a stream of animated comments.

This is a JavaScript-based, generative work (not video)!!! When the code runs on the website, it randomly selects a primary phrase and selection of comments. The piece is never the same twice.

Serendipitously, one of my favorite artworks, Christian Marclay’s The Clock, was on view at MoMA for a good portion of this past year. Nolan Kelly wrote a great piece in New York Review of Architecture thinking through the two…

It’s very sweet to have lived nearly a year of realistic days in my life with this work running on small screens around the world.

If you catch it this last week, send me a photo? And click on the screen! There’s an easter egg about your life.

Stay realistic,

Maya

I’m writing to share something very special! Recently, I spoke with Ben Davis for The Art Angle, Artnet’s podcast, about digital art, my work, and HEART.

You can listen here or on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else.

It’s really nice to talk about HEART in its aftermath. I have a lot to say about what it represents to me in relation to contemporary art and digital modes of making.

I also float a new term on the pod for the way that I’m thinking about the “post-post-internet” generation of artists making work on and about the internet.

Ben (newsletter here) wrote a nice intro text for the episode. Sharing below.

────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────

Every rising generation reinvents the rules of how art works. What are the new new ways of working? What kinds of spaces serve those needs? I keep coming back to these questions, and it’s part of why I decided I wanted to talk to Maya Man.

Man got her MFA from the famous Media Art program at the University of California in 2023. She makes art that’s fun and very online, looking at the digital world and the way it blurs reality and performance. Right now, her work A Realistic Day in My Life Living in New York City is the first-ever work commissioned by the Whitney Museum for its “On the Hour” program, taking over the museum’s website every hour for 30 seconds. Set your clock if you want to catch it.

Man is also a scene-maker herself. I first heard about her experimental art space, HEART, after it had already closed, earlier this year. But in its brief, frenzied life, it left a big mark. It was a space where a certain kind of experimental online/offline art scene that feels very now started to define itself. I was excited to talk with her about her work and what that scene is.

—Ben Davis

────── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──────

If you do listen, send thoughts or leave a comment here. That would be really exciting.

Stay cool, and, believe in yourself,

Maya

I’ve missed you!!! I have been slowly processing everything that happened during our glowing time together at 442 Broadway. It was very special to me and it has meant a lot to hear that it was special to many of you too after running into you in person, through an email, or in the guestbook.

I am writing to let you know about an event, HEART’s first Off-Broadway production, happening this Sunday, May 11th, 4:30 PM at Rhizome World. It’s free and open to the public. RSVP here.

HEARTLine: Confessions on Love, Art, and the Internet with Maya Man and Thalia Stefaniuk

Sunday, May 11, 4:30PM - 5:30PM

Rhizome World, WSA, 161 Water Street, New York, NY 10038

TEXT your questions and confessions about living in an online art world to (412) 256 - 8055 NOW! (Seriously text in anything, it’s anon)…

♡──♡──♡

The session will be structured like an advice show about the emotional chaos of the art world in the age of the internet. We’ll be discussing the struggle of getting physical vs digital, the myth of the ‘perfect’ institutional partner, toxic relationship dynamics, art crushes, and heartbreak. The program includes an in-depth conversation about HEART as a curatorial project so far, the challenges of navigating online and offline art worlds, a live reading of anonymous confessions, and an open Q&A.

I’ve been working with curator Thalia Stefaniuk on this who is amazing. I am very excited to be sharing the stage with her this Sunday. See you there!

More soon, in the meantime, TEXT NOW (412) 256-8055,

Maya

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Read more

So unfortunately, due to building restrictions, I am no longer able to host HEART at my studio at 442 Broadway. I got the news last week. This was my co-star that day, for real.

It’s been the experience of a lifetime running this sweet space for the past seven plus months. It really rocked my world! I am endlessly grateful for the chance to bring people together in New York City around shared enthusiasm for the most exciting genre of art in the universe. I am hoping that this can continue on in other places and formats.

I’ll be writing more about my own work here in the time between now and what is next. It was always my intention for this blog to encompass both my own practice and HEART, but running HEART took over nearly everything for me, and the posts here thus far reflect that.

HEART is an entirely self-funded project and relied on the support of everyone who showed up via event ticket sales. If you want to support everything HEART was and might be in the future in a fresh form, please consider becoming a paid subscriber here.

As a token of appreciation and souvenir of our time together at 442 Broadway, I will be offering a limited edition I ♡ HEART keychain included in paid subscriptions. Instructions to receive will go out to paid subscribers next week. No other promises come with a paid subscription right now beyond this and my love and gratitude for your support of HEART and my personal practice.

Also, alternatively, I just released the I ♡ HEART T-Shirt on Metalabel and am accepting orders within the USA until midnight on April Fool’s Day 2025. The shirt is light pink and features HEART’s logo. Available now here.

If you were part of HEART so far in any way big or small, please sign the guestbook I just added to the website. Feel free to leave a note or even just your name. It would mean a lot.

Only the good die young, life is short, appreciate what you have while you have it, count your blessings, etc. Shooting stars! Landing gracefully.

Big love, thank you infinity for being there, and more soon,

Maya

I wanted to share my interview with Meg Miller on Are.na Editorial where we discuss HEART’s intentions, origins, hopes, and dreams.

I hosted the Are.na Annual 2025 Launch Party at HEART in December and I use Are.na every day. It’s one of my favorite websites in the world.

The experience of running HEART has been really meaningful to me over the past seven plus months. Its existence feels like an impossibly lucky confluence of factors. It is very special to document some of my behind the scenes thinking through this interview.

Hopefully you feel it if you have ever visited.

Be careful what you wish for,

Maya

HEART will be presenting Girl Crush: a screening of video and software-based work by fourteen artists engaging with themes of femininity, desire, and how admiration is mediated by our screens. The screening features an all-star line up of artists:

• ​Isabelle Amaral

• ​Ann Hirsch

• ​Maggie Lee

• ​Karrington Lewis

• ​Yuchi Ma

• ​Maya Man

• ​Tess Manhattan

• ​Olivia McKayla Ross

• ​Zarina Nares

• ​Molly Soda

• ​Mackenzie Thomas

• ​Antigoni Tsagkaropoulou

• ​Sara Yukiko

• ​Sotce

This will also be the NYC launch of my book FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT which focuses on my generative art collection of the same name. Terry Nguyen will be reading poetry she wrote with the generative output from the collection. I will be reading an excellent essay by Biz Sherbert that is included in the book to introduce the screening.

PLUS…

All my love,

Maya

Thursday, February 6th at 7pm, Blade Study and HEART are excited to present PANOPTICON II, the second in the MORNINGSTAR Performance Series bringing performers and artists working with sound and culture as a form together.

​Featuring performances by Emmett Palaima, Zarina Nares, Ben Shirken and Dasychira.

It’s very beautiful to collaborate on this event with Blade Study! They rock and so will this event. Details below and tickets available here. $10 presale and $15 at the door.

​3D Flyer artwork by TJ @weaponized_gf.

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You guys know about Heartblade?

“Heartblade is a godly knife that was originally obtainable by purchasing the Heartblade Gamepass for 1,699 Robux.”

I made this tribute…

Featured artists:

EMMETT PALAIMA

Emmett Palaima works with electronics and esoteric processes of sound creation. His practice is rooted in the idea that technology and magic are one and the same, and that electricity is a manifestation of divine or elemental forces underlying reality.

ZARINA NARES

Zarina Nares’ practice explores femininity in virtual spaces, focusing on desire, authenticity, self-worth, and self-performance. She examines how these themes are digitally shaped and how they relate to broader societal structures, past and present.

BEN SHIRKEN

Ben Shirken (Ex Wiish), is an artist, musician, recording/mixing engineer and curator living in Brooklyn, NYC. Founder of record label & performance series 29 Speedway which features forward-thinking improvisational music and live multimedia.

DASYCHIRA

Dasychira (pronounced /ˈdah.see.kira/) is a South African-born artist by way of New York City. They actively engage with the cobweb of magical realism around them, creating music and art that tiptoes between dimensions of fantasy.

ok guys the search is over i got the heartblade!! 💗💗,

Maya

Link to sign up for the online workshop.

Link to sign up for the in person workshop.

With LOVE,

Maya

Extreme Animals VHS Tape Release Show at HEART with Callahan & Witscher and DJ COOL GROCERIES.

​Tickets $15 presale online here.

$20 at door.

Curated by Molly Soda :* <33333

Very honored to be hosting this at HEART. C u there !!!!!!!

Are computers making our lives easier or just too complicated?

Happy new year,

Maya

Starting HEART this year has rocked my world. It’s been a whirlwind, a joy, and an unbelievable challenge.

If you enjoyed your time at HEART this year and care about in-person events happening around online art and culture, please consider becoming a paid subscriber (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡ !

All proceeds go toward HEART’s programming that supports artists engaging with the internet, software, and pop culture through next year… I believe in the importance of art on the internet being presented off of the internet too.

Thank you! Now, let’s look back at everything that happened at 442 Broadway, Floor #3 this year.

☆ 2024 at HEART ☆

Sacred Screenshots: An exhibition featuring 26 artists each presenting a “sacred screenshot” from their phone…

Going Live with Mindy Seu: A Sexual History of the Internet

Rehearsals for Trivial Pursuit, a play by Molly Soda

Going Live with Rafaël Rozendaal and Jeremy Bailey: Artist Website Critique Night

Sacred Screenshots Show Closing! Artist Walkthrough

Let's Play Majerus LIVE with Cory Arcangel presented by Rhizome

The Play by Maya Martinez

Lavender Town (Curated by Cori Cannavino and Miles Peyton)

Going Live with Maya Ben David: Super Saiyan Feminism

WORK BITCH RAVE FREQUENCY HEALING MEDITATION FOR STRESS AND BURNOUT AND BECOMING YOUR BEST SELF BY LETTING GO OF YOUR PAST AND FOLLOWING YOUR TRUTH AND PUTTING IN THE HARD WORK BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT!!!! by Zarina Nares

Are.na Annual 2025 Book Launch Party

Rhizome’s Super Ultimate Internet Day

It’s nice to see all of these moments collected. I hope it gives you a sense of HEART’s purpose.

It’s been a special year. Anything is possible. Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

Maya

Zarina Nares: WORK BITCH RAVE FREQUENCY HEALING MEDITATION FOR STRESS AND BURNOUT AND BECOMING YOUR BEST SELF BY LETTING GO OF YOUR PAST AND FOLLOWING YOUR TRUTH AND PUTTING IN THE HARD WORK BECAUSE YOU DESERVE IT!!!!

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

7:00 PM (Be there absolutely by 7:28 PM)

INSTALLATION (KIND OF) (HARD TO DESCRIBE)

Zarina and I serendipitously ran into each other in person at El Prado in Los Angeles a while back when we both lived there after recently following each other in instagram. I initially found her work through her 2022 book TIK TOK + THE PATRIARCHY + THE 4TH DIMENSION and immediately became a fan. I included her video work Meditation For Releasing The Capitalist Patriarchy Within in “Girl Crush,” a video and software-based artwork screening that I curated this past February at Heavy Manners Library.

She’s one of my favorite artists making work about the internet, images, and girl culture online right now and this installation is going to be excellent. It’s free and full of surprises. See you thereeeeeeeeeee !!! (PLEASE COME ALL ARE WELCOME)

Are.na Annual Book Launch Party

Friday, December 13, 2024

7:00 - 9:00 PM

Celebrating the release of the sixth Are.na Annual, themed “document.”

There will be copies of the book and readings by Gerardo Ismael Madera, Reuben Son, Megumi Tanaka, and Finnegan Shannon.

The mood will be warm and casual.

RSVP here.

I would be nothing without Are.na.

Rhizome’s super ultimate internet day

Saturday, December 14, 2024

12:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Rhizome presents their very first day fest/holiday market: rhizome’s super ultimate internet day! featuring talks, workshops, 20+ vendors, snacks, and more at HEART.

More details and tickets here.

For me, this is what I dreamed HEART be all about. All these events together. It’s been honestly soooooo crazy working out how to run a space on the fly… I will write more about it someday I think… but for now, please join this week and let’s enjoy the peace and love of hanging out in “real” time and space.

In my world, Ann Hirsch and my project Ugly Bitches is featured in this season’s issue of Art in America in the piece “As the AI Girlfriend Industry Takes Off, These Feminist Artists are Hacking the System” by Emily Watlington. Read it online here or you can pick it up in print. Little Ugly pictured here, taking a look.

My quilted piece accident, turbulent, succulent, opulent was on view at Untitled Art Fair in Miami this past week with bitforms. I wrote a program to take in a curated selection of found online imagery and “cut out” sections to generate a layout. The back of the quilt features lyrics from Avril Lavigne’s “Anything but Ordinary” off of her 2002 album “Let Go.” The title of the piece is an excerpt of her lyrics.

Soundtrack for looking.

Chorus:

Is it enough to love?

Is it enough to breathe?

Somebody rip my heart out and leave me here to bleed

Is it enough to die?

Somebody save my life

I'd rather be anything but ordinary, please

See you this week, keep it real ♡,

Maya

For the third installment of HEART’s Going Live series, I am so very pleased to be presenting Super Saiyan Feminism, a performance by the illustrious Maya Ben David this Thursday, November 21st at HEART! 

Maya Ben David will be giving giving a 30-minute PowerPoint performance on all her deepest most depraved secrets. Just like a cabinet of curiosities, some facts are as real as ancient fossils, some truths desecrated, pulled out of context, and twisted for her amusement. Cookies will be served, and absurd pregnancy will be heavily discussed. 

Super Saiyan Feminism

Maya Ben David

Thursday, November 21, 7-9 PM

Tickets available here.

Maya lives in Canada, so I feel especially lucky to be able to host her at HEART during her trip to New York City!

With her work, she says that she straddles two different worlds, the art world and YouTube. And that she is “most content when I am being validated by both.” 

Really hope you can make it.

Kisses,

(Also) Maya (Man)

Friday, October 25th, 6pm to midnight

Tickets ✧˚₊🔮

HEART is pleased to present Lavender Town, a one-night only exhibition and evening of performances surveying the resurgence of religious practice in an age of networked technologies.

The selected works address haunted media, Chinese natural philosophy, tech-optimism, subliminal manifestations, and the mysteries of the rosary.

The exhibition is named after a burial ground for deceased Pokémon.

Featuring Artists:

Chia Amisola @hotmogf

Alex Beige @virtually.alex.beige

Alex Freundlich @applinfreundlich

Max Hawkins @maxhawkins

Liby Hays @liby_hays

Lau Mota ​​@l444u_

Edward Ongweso Jr @barryoaks

Anna Pederson @annapederson

Amalia Rosa @chismosa97

Hunter Thompson @terrorism______

Wendi Yan @wendiyan

Claudia Yile @o00o0omfmfmfmmfmfmmfhgggggggg

Zak Ziebell @zakzzb

Leming Zhong @1.l.l.l.l.l.e

Lavender Town is curated by Cori Cannavino and Miles Peyton.

Performance Schedule

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The Blackpilled Synthesis by Alex Beige

9:30 PM - 11:30 PM

The Blackpilled Synthesis by Alex Beige

Ongoing Performances

Amalia Rosa, Lau Mota, Ruby Thelot

50 Shades of Mischief

Wednesday, October 30th, 6PM

Tickets ₊˚🕯️♱‧₊˚.

A very delightful night of mischief!!! Featuring halloween readings by Maggie Fitzpatrick, Mackenzie Thomas, Montana James Thomas, and Vanessa Barros Andrade followed by a screening of 536, a very sexy short film by Lydia Kuzak with an introduction by Kellen MacGregor.

On 536…

Hag horror meets grotesque mukbang in Ireland circa 536 AD (referred to by medieval scholars as “the worst year to be alive”) in this psycho-biddy period piece about three paganesses, a foreign man lost in the forest and a feast appalling enough to shock a Visigoth. Among the many secluded pagan tribes of pre-Christian Ireland, a particularly nasty trio of maiden, Celtic hags encounters a seemingly aimless Anglo-Saxon explorer in their isolated neck of the woods. This unexpected instance of first contact between paganism and Christianity ignites a never-before-kindled fire within the wenches’ untouched loins. Overcome by their newfound libidos, the two stupidest women in medieval Ireland (Isabelle Molnar & Kellen MacGregor) decide to forgo their offering for the Imbolc celebration in exchange for a taste of their manly visitor. Disgusted by these dolts’ foolishness, the smartest woman in medieval Ireland (Violet Webster) conjures Brighid, a highly revered and fearsome deity, to punish her simple underlings for their lecherous folie-à-deux. As the most wretched women in Irish history yearn, glut, bicker, scheme and repent altogether, the future of Ireland’s sovereignty and its pagan traditions rests in their sordidly corrupt hands.

Curated by Maya Martinez. Please attend in costume.

Thank you for engaging with my content,

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁✮. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

,,𓉸ྀི,,,,𓉸ྀི,𓇗,,𓉸ྀི,,,𓉸ྀི,,,,,,𓇗,,,𓉸ྀི,,,

( ˘ ³˘)♥︎♥︎♥︎ Maya

As the subject states I am sooooooo excited for this coming Wednesday night because Rhizome is hosting Cory Arcangel at HEART for a live presentation of his ongoing YouTube series Let’s Play Majerus G3 🎥, a project presented in collaboration with the Michel Majerus Estate.

Cory’s an incredible artist, and as Rhizome writes, pioneering web surfer, experimental musician, lifestyle brand designer, recursive compression enthusiast, and now YouTuber.

I admire the way he’s been shaping and presenting this project over the past few years. It is very special to see an artist speak in depth about another artist whose work they love, down to the very specific details. When I first encountered Majerus’s work online, I had a very similar reaction to what Cory describes in the first video. The YouTube videos are highly accessible, clearly welcoming art and non-art audiences both. And I love seeing people engage with Majerus and his work in the comment section. But now YOU can be the comment section if you come on Wednesday…

Get tickets here!

Also, last week I walked to see some shows Chelsea. If you haven’t already, I highlyyyyyyyyy recommend going to see three specific favorite works… randomly two are actually not in a gallery, but on THE HIGH LINE.

1. Christian Marclay, Subtitled, Paula Cooper Gallery

It’s awesome. In a literal sense. Talk about slice of life!!! I relate a lot to Marclay’s practice of collection and collage. His methods of media organization and remix are elegant, but for me, highly emotional too. I admire that level of control and technique applied to pop culture in all of my favorite internet artists…

I picked up a copy of his artist book Telephones, which is a physical manifestation of his 1995 work of the same name. It was out of stock at the gallery, but I found one at the nearby associated bookstore 192 Books. It rocks I have it at HEART if you want to come by and check it out.

2. Lily van der Stokker, Thank You Darling, High Line

I discovered Lily’s work first by seeing it in Basel, drawn to it amidst the noise of eye roll self seriousness at the fair. Soon after, double luck, Rafaël Rozendaal, sent me a link to an interview of her’s. She’s a Dutch artist, who I was excited to learn, moved to New York in 1980s where she opened her own gallery in the East Village. I am dying to read her book How I Went to New York, but it’s like $150 online anywhere I can find it now… does anyone have a copy?

3. Cosima von Bonin, WHAT IF THEY BARK?, High Line

I initially introduced to Cosima von Bonin through her textile work. Her attitude shines through in everything she produces. I appreciate the absurdity. I had never seen these sculptures in person until this day. They feel perfectly placed here against the Manhattan backdrop. Even more apt in this theater-like arrangement swimming in the sky than against a white gallery wall, where I had always seen them pictured previously. There’s something so aspirational about them to me. Like they saw Dua Lipa wearing Chopova Lowena and wanted to be Just Like Her…

If you’re in the area, also recommend David Salle’s New Pastorals at Gladstone and Josh Kline’s Social Media at Lisson. They way that Salle and Laurie Simmons are talking about skirts in this interview brings me back to Cosima von Bonin’s fish…

Anyway, HEART has some really amazing events coming up soon that I’ll be emailing about in the coming weeks, so stay tuned, ttyl <3

Let’s stay playful together,

Maya

Sacred Screenshots Closing Party

Wednesday, September 11, 6 to 8 PM

First, this Wednesday is the last chance ever to view the Sacred Screenshots exhibition. The show will come down after this, so if you want to see it in person please come by. A few of the artists will be gathering to walk through and share the lore behind their screenshots with everyone at 7 PM.

Sacred Screenshots, Installation View, Photos by Jason Isolini

I guess I have not written here since the opening, which was amazing and infamously HOT. I ordered custom T-Shirts to commemorate the occasion. Very limited edition but there are a few extra if you want to pick one up at the closing party to prove You Survived.

Going Live With Rafaël Rozendaal & Jeremy Bailey: Artist Website Critique Night

Sunday, September 15, 5 PM

I’m soooooooo excited about this. I used to listen to Rafaël and Jeremy’s podcast Good Point a lot, so it’s very cool to be able to host them back together at HEART for a night of discourse around what makes a good artist homepage. During the event, they will critique real-life examples—from emerging artists to blue-chip celebrities like JEFFKOONS.COM. They will also take suggestions from the audience, so if you want your own website analyzed, bring it to maybe be discussed.. !

This is the second installment of HEART’s event series ⭐️ Going Live ⭐️ that features in person lectures, presentations, and performances from friends.

Limited seating, so get your tickets here.

Previously, at HEART

A couple of weeks ago, HEART hosted the first Going Live with Mindy Seu, a preview of her new performance lecture A Sexual History Of The Internet that uses Instagram Stories as slides. The lecture was sold out. We blacked out the windows so the room got glowy from the pink, blue, and green light on everyone’s phones at once. If you missed it, you can read more about it in DIRT. Thank you to Walden Green for the scene report!

Mindy Seu: A Sexual History Of The Internet, Performance Lecture Documentation, Photos by Maya Man

Field Trip: Trivial Pursuit, A Play By Molly Soda

September 19 and 20 at Pageant in Brooklyn

And lastly! All summer at HEART, Molly, Mackenzie, Maya, and I have been rehearsing twice a week for Molly’s new play Trivial Pursuit which premieres next week at Pageant in Brooklyn. The first two shows sold out, but Pageant added a third Friday late night show September 20th at 10 PM that still has tickets available.

Molly is one of my all time favorite artists and it is an honor to be part of the first play she is writing and directing. It’s features three girls at a vision boarding party…

Get your tickets here.

Pictures From Play Rehearsal

Okayyyyyyyyy thanks for reading! LOVE reading. I really hope to see you in person offline at one of these happenings very soon.

Don't go breaking my heart
I couldn't if I tried
Honey if I get restless
Baby you're not that kind

ily,

Maya