Harvestworks and Roulette are pleased to co-present Maya Man’s performance-lecture StarQuest. The program will include an introduction by Harvestworks Interim Director Ivana Dama, followed by a conversation with Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The performance is supported by Harvestworks’ 2026 Special Project Award. 

StarQuest is a generative, software-based body of work that dives into the high-stakes world of youth competitive dance. Inspired by Man’s own childhood as a competitive dancer, AI-generated dancers glide and spin across the screen in an ever-shifting sequence, pausing to share their anxieties in confessionals akin to the reality TV show Dance Moms. What emerges is an uneasy mix of sincerity and simulation. 

The performance-lecture, written and performed by the artist, integrates her generative work, online content, and choreography to consider the parallels between competition dance culture in America and today’s algorithmic ecosystem that encourages a quantifiable performance of self.

The performance directly follows her exhibition, StarPower, on view at bitforms gallery in New York City through May 2nd, 2026. A closing reception for the exhibition will be held on Saturday, May 2, 5–8PM. All are welcome to attend ahead of the performance. More details on the exhibition are available here.

StarQuest was previously co-presented by Triple Canopy and Feral File in New York City in November 2025 at Gibney: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center with curator Nora O’Murchu and by bitforms, SOOT, and the Future Humans program at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles in February 2026 at L.A. Dance Project with curator Alice Scope. Special thank you to Mackenzie Davenport, Camille Wong, Yuchi Ma, Eden Reinfurt, and Tina Tarighian.

This program is supported in-part by mediaThe Foundation.

Maya Man is an artist focused on pop culture’s soft power and contemporary identity culture on the internet. Her work examines dominant narratives around femininity, authenticity, and the performance of self. She has exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; bitforms, NYC; the Museum of Fashion, Antwerp; SOOT, Tokyo; Verse, London; HEK, Basel; and the online platform Feral File. She has performed or presented her work at The New Museum, NYC; The V&A and Tate Britain, London; and MOCA, Los Angeles. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Document, New York Review of Architecture, Los Angeles Review of Books, and CURA among other publications. She organizes a curatorial project called HEART, previously run out of her studio in SoHo. She is online at mayaontheinter.net.

Christiane Paul is Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Professor Emerita at The New School. She is the recipient of the 2023 MediaArtHistories International Award and the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art. Her latest books are Digital Art (4th ed., 2023) and A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, 2016). At the Whitney Museum she curated exhibitions including Parting Worlds / Hyundai Terrace Commission: Marina Zurkow (2025), Harold Cohen: AARON (2024), Refigured (2023), and Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965 – 2018 (2018/19) and is responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to internet art. Other curatorial work includes Chain Reaction (feralfile.com, 2023), DiMoDA 4.0 Dis/Location (traveling show, 2021-23), and The Question of Intelligence (Kellen Gallery, The New School, NYC, 2020).