New-York based artist Tau Lewis will present her first live performance in the stunning neo-gothic Harlem Parish, reimagining the ancient Sumerian epic The Descent of Inanna (c. 1900-1600 BCE), a mythical narrative of self-discovery chronicling the goddess Inanna's journey into the underworld to visit her recently widowed sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Dead. As she passes through the seven gateways to the underworld, Inanna strips away clothing, jewelry, and earthly symbols of power and self. In the process, she confronts her mortality in a cyclical narrative of death and transformation.

Lewis is known for her sculptures constructed from found objects and imbued with ancestral presence to create fantastical, alternative worlds that can be considered a form of hand-crafted science fiction. In No one ascends from the underworld unmarked each sculpture embodies a character, animating her monumental sculptures into living archetypes: Inanna, Ereshkigal, and their spectral companions. Dancers move the sculptures across the stage like chess pieces, their form and motion serving as a retelling of Sumerian myth. The shedding of material objects in the story mirrors Lewis’s own material language—where discarded fragments take on a new life as vessels of mourning and metamorphosis.

In Sumerian language the sign for “ear” also means “wisdom”—Inanna was called to listen to the wisdom of the underworld. To channel this idea, and to ask audiences to listen as well as look, Lewis has collaborated with acclaimed composer and vocalist Lyra Pramuk. Known for blending voice, electronics, folk, gospel, house, and classical traditions into something singular and otherworldly, Pramuk resembles Lewis’s approach to form: hybrid, layered, and deeply intuitive. Together, they craft an experimental opera drawn from the poem’s English translation, creating a mythic soundscape that charts Inanna’s emotional descent and return.