Events
Sat, Mar 28
|Pen + Brush
EWB: Performance Art Day
Over the course of the afternoon and into the evening the exhibition space at Pen + Brush will be activated by a series of interdisciplinary performances that span spoken word, burlesque, contemporary music, and visual art.
Time & Location
Mar 28, 2026, 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Pen + Brush, 29 E 22nd St, New York, NY 10010, USA
About the Event
Over the course of the afternoon and into the evening the exhibition space at Pen + Brush will be activated by a series of interdisciplinary performances that span spoken word, burlesque, contemporary music, and visual art.
Marja Samsom, performing as "Miss B Have," will captivate audiences with her glamorous and humorous tribute to the 1970s Alcazar Club in Paris in her piece, Creme Brûlée. Chanel Matsunami Govreau will present Separate the Spine from the Body, a powerful exploration of bodily negotiations shaped by chronic illness and gender fluidity, blending sci-fi horror and ritualized gestures to confront discomfort and transformation. Jennifer Wright and Kathleen Supové will perform The Mad Libbers' Tea Party, a provocative and playful commentary on censorship, featuring spoken word, toy pianos, and a full tea set. Finally, Paola Fiterre will invite the audience to participate in Crossed Line, a collective exploration of limits, interdependence, and embodied trust through shared movement and interaction.
Chanel Matsunami
Paola Fiterre
Paola Martínez Fiterre is a Cuban artist based in New York, whose practice focuses on the representation of the female body as shaped by the migratory experience. She studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana and graduated from the International Center of Photography in 2019, where she received the ICP Director’s Scholarship and the ICP New Media Grant. Fiterre uses performance, photography, video, among other media, as tools of perception to inhabit the domestic, the social, and the biological, subverting their gendered meanings. She has received fellowships such as the 2022 Reed Foundation Fellowship for Cuban artists and, in 2023, the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Photography. The work of Paola Fiterre offers an intimate reckoning with the body, identity, and the immigrant experience. Using her own body as both subject and medium; as a space of confrontation and contemplation. Her work is a reflection on the tension between personal and cultural identity, exploring themes such as migration, the female figure in a globalized society, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Fiterre’s work evokes a visceral response, drawing attention to the shared experience of “otherness” that transcends borders, cultures, and bodies.
Chanel Matsunami
Chanel Matsunami Govreau (they/she) is a multidisciplinary artist working across soft sculpture, textile installation, and performance. Their practice fuses fantasy with queer opulence to create speculative rituals that explore harm reduction, bodily endurance, and gender fluidity. Chanel’s textile work, screen-printed, sewn, and sculpted into installations and modular wearables, draws from Japanese folklore, armor and video game imagery.
Marja Sansom
Marja Samsom is a European born performance artist film maker and conceptual artist based in New York. Working primarily in Super8 film, her inter national practice explores memory and identity. She has presented at Participant After Dark and exhibited widely in New York. Her two books are available at Printed Matter.
Kathleen Supové
Pianist Kathleen Supové (composer/performer) has long been lauded as one of New York City’s finest new music exponents. Admired for her “exploding the piano recital as we have known it...” (NY Times), she received ASCAP’s John Cage Award (2012) for “the artistry and passion with which she performs, commissions, records, and champions the music of our time”. She works with a Who’s Who of top composers and musicians, in every genre. She presents an annual series of solo concerts entitled THE EXPLODING PIANO, and also composes. In addition to humans, she has performed with Yamaha Disklaviers, laptop orchestras, robots, and XReality. She has also received composer commissions from NYSCA, Brooklyn Arts Council, Bargemusic, and the Illustrated Man Project. Visit www.supove.com and Instagram (@kathyexploding) for more info.
Jennifer Wright
Jennifer Wright is a pianist, performance artist, composer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, and experimental instrument creator whose work investigates social and environmental issues through the creation of dynamic, multi-sensory experiences. She performs regularly as a solo and collaborative artist and has presented, curated, and produced numerous shows, festivals, and workshops in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Cuba. She has been described as “a real force of nature” (FearNoMusic director Kenji Bunch), “New music glam!” (Aligned Artistry), “the most entertaining, exciting, and important composer you haven’t heard of!” (Joshua Cheek, music writer), “Stellar”, “A born performer”, “Compelling”, ” Innovative...wonderfully experimental” and “brassy, nutty, classy...mad, quite mad.” (Oregon ArtsWatch).