MIWA

Join Journey Arts for MIWA, an exhibition and performance event happening in November 2025.

MIWA, Haitian Creole for “mirror,” is a powerful new musical and visual experience from Haitian-American sisters Nathalie “Talie” Cerin and Lunise Cerin. Talie and Lunise blend music and film into a transporting exploration of everyday and sacred rituals of care passed through generations. Through this mirror, MIWA asks: How do we carry cultural legacies—both spoken and unspoken—into the present?

Rooted in both ancestral memory and contemporary life, MIWA traces the threads that connect Haitian women across geography and time. Filmmaker Lunise Cerin gathers stories and visuals in Haiti and the U.S. and interweaves them into a five-part film collage, while singer/songwriter Talie Cerin mines personal and diasporic influences—Haitian folk, spirituals, and soul—for a musical portrait of Haitian spirit.

The sisters’ creative dialogue will become an evocative live performance premiering in Philadelphia in November 2025. MIWA audiences will wander through an unfolding series of small, immersive worlds crafted by artist/maker Nia Benjamin to house and highlight Lunise’s film in five distinctive experiences, leading to a culminating performance of MIWA’s music featuring Talie on vocals and guitar, alongside a stellar ensemble.

Amid ongoing displacement and cultural disconnection, MIWA offers a space of reconnection through song, ritual, and story. This living project invites us to see ourselves, clearly and tenderly, through the lens of our culture, and each other.

Exhibition doors open at 7 PM, with the concert beginning at 8 PM. The exhibition will be open an additional 30 minutes after the concert concludes.

Lead funding for MIWA was provided by the William Penn Foundation, with additional support from the Independence Public Media Fund, and development support from the National Endowment of the Arts .

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Icebox Project Space, 1400 North American Street, Philadelphia, United States