bitforms gallery is pleased to present StarPower, a generative, software-based body of work by Maya Man that explores the high-stakes world of youth competitive dance through the lens of AI collaboration. Drawing from Man’s own childhood as a competitive dancer, AI-generated performers glide and spin across the screen in an ever-shifting sequence, periodically pausing to deliver confessional monologues reminiscent of reality television formats such as Dance Moms. Known for her examination of contemporary identity culture on the internet—particularly dominant narratives around femininity, authenticity, and the performance of self—Man stages an uneasy convergence of lived memory and synthetic simulation. In StarPower, sincerity and artifice collapse into one another, foregrounding how vulnerability, ambition, and selfhood are rehearsed and mediated within competitive spectacle and algorithmic systems.

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Maya Man (b. 1996, Pennsylvania, USA) is an artist focused on 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.