Eisa Davis: The Essentialisn’t
may 4th - may 13th

Can you get your hair wet? Do you have to sing to keep yourself from sinking? What of your artistry comes from fear and what comes from freedom?

Award-winning creator and performer Eisa Davis transforms JACK into a contemporary art museum hosting The Essentialisn't-a transatlantic undrowning-in a pasture of hair. This original sound-based conceptual artwork uses movement, voice, electronics and figures from the Harlem Renaissance as templates to reflect on present day policing of black artistry. Focusing on the central question "Can you be black and not perform?," Davis cultivates a black feminine practice of presence and sovereignty.

Previously developed at Park Avenue Armory and Mass MoCA, followed by an acclaimed installation at Performance Space New York, The Essentialisn't at JACK evolves further as a conceptual art and performance piece. The Essentialisn't will feature multidisciplinary artist, performer, and vocalist Justin Hicks and Maya Kronfeld. Other artists to be announced.

About the Artists
Eisa Davis is a writer, composer, and performer. A recipient of a Creative Capital Award, an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance, and the Herb Alpert Award in Theater, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play Bulrusher. Davis wrote and starred in the stage memoir Angela’s Mixtape. Other works include Paper Armor, Umkovu, Hip Hop Anansi, Six Minutes, The History Of Light (Barrymore nomination), Warriors Don’t Cry, Ramp (Ruby Prize), ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||:, The Essentialisn’t, and Mushroom. A multivolume series of her plays is soon to be published by 53rd State Press. Eisa led the 2021 black femme celebration of Kathleen Collins’ work AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, and has recorded two albums of original music — Something Else and Tinctures. She has enjoyed a multi-decade career as a performer for the stage and screen. Current collaborations include the libretto for an opera adaptation of Bulrusher and the music and lyrics for Devil In A Blue Dress. An alumna of New Dramatists, she has received residencies, awards, and fellowships from the United States Artists Foundation, Hermitage Artist Retreat, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Helen Merrill Foundation, the Van Lier and Mellon Foundations, New Dramatists, and Cave Canem. Davis was born and raised in the Bay Area and lives in Brooklyn. eisadavis.com

Justin Hicks is a multidisciplinary artist, performer and vocalist who uses music and sound to investigate themes of presence, identity, and value. His work has been featured at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Performance Space New York, The Public Theater, JACK, National Black Theatre, The Bushwick Starr, MoMA, Dixon Place, festival Steirischer Herbst (Graz, Austria), Western Front Society (Vancouver, BC), MASS MoCA, The Whitney Museum of American Art,  Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham, UK), The Albertinum - SKD (Dresden, Germany), The Highline, and The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts among others. Hicks has collaborated with notable visual artists, musicians, and theater-makers including Abigail DeVille, Charlotte Brathwaite, Kaneza Schaal, Meshell Ndegeocello, Cauleen Smith, Helga Davis, and Ayesha Jordan. He was the Drama Desk-nominated composer for Mlima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage (The Public Theater 2018, dir. Jo Bonney). His practice with artist Steffani Jemison, Mikrokosmos, has deployed commissioned performances and exhibitions internationally. Hicks was a member of Kara Walker’s 6-8 Months Space and holds a culinary diploma from ICE in New York City. He was born in Cincinnati, OH, and is based in the Bronx. Learn more at https://justinhicksmusic.live/

Maya Kronfeld  is a pianist, keyboardist, educator, and scholar whose interdisciplinary approach brings disparate worlds together. Rooted in jazz and known for her versatility with related genres, Maya has performed cutting-edge soul music with Georgia Anne Muldrow, Toshi Reagon, Nona Hendryx and Van Hunt, and lent her skills to exhilarating drummer-led projects by Justin Brown, Blaque Dynamite, Nikkie Glaspie and Thomas Pridgen. In 2019 Maya appeared at the Nublu Jazz Festival in Brazil, the Winter Jazz Festival in New York City, and was a featured pianist in her native Bay Area for the SFJAZZ Festival’s Mad About Monk concert, celebrating Thelonious Monk’s 101st birthday. She leads the Maya Kronfeld Trio, and has appeared with saxophonist Howard Wiley’s Extra Nappy and Linda Tillery’s Songs of Protest, as well as touring with Israeli trumpeter Itamar Borochov. Maya completed her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She has given lectures internationally on literature, philosophy, critical theory and music. Her article, “The Philosopher’s Bass Drum: Adorno’s Jazz and the Politics of Rhythm” was published in the internationally renowned journal Radical Philosophy and Maya is also a distinguished Cotsen Fellow in Humanistic Studies at Princeton.