Tau Lewis:  No one ascends from the underworld unmarked 

Production | Artistic Production Grant

For the 2025 edition of the Performa Biennial, Tau Lewis presents No one ascends from the underworld unmarked, a new installation and live performance staged in Harlem Parish, Harlem, New York. In her sculptural practice, Lewis often transforms foraged textiles and artifacts into magical, anthropomorphic beings, hand-sewing and crafting the materials she collects into subversive monuments, that carry the animistic qualities the materials’ past lives into their new sculptural incarnation. In her Performa commission No one ascends from the underworld unmarked, Lewis reimagines the epic Sumerian poem The Descent of Inanna, an archetypal narrative of self-discovery chronicling the goddess’s journey into the underworld to visit her recently widowed sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead. Here, Lewis’s sculptures each embody a character: Inanna, Ereshkigal, and their spectral companions, moving across the stage like chess pieces led by puppeteers, their form and motion serving as a retelling of Sumerian myth. Lewis collaborated with acclaimed composer and vocalist Lyra Pramuk to bring the story to life. Known for blending voice, electronics, folk, gospel, house, and classical traditions into something singular and otherworldly, Pramuk echoes Lewis’s approach to form: hybrid, layered, and deeply intuitive. Together, they have crafted an experimental opera drawn from the poem’s English translation, creating a mythic soundscape that charts Inanna’s emotional descent and return. 

For more information, visit performa2025.org 

Curated by Kathy Noble, Senior Curator, Performa. Brandts Museum in Odense, Denmark and Tramway in Glasgow are co-producers of this work. These institutions will present the next two chapters of this project in 2026-27 as an exhibition installation.