The Brazilian Victoria Mussi, Audio Visual director, takes the helm of SoMad’s Pride season opener on June 13, the same night SoMad closes MadWorld 2026, and leads the platform’s official Upstate Art Weekend program from June 25 through 27. Within twelve days, she will move from drag floor lighting to the technical direction of an experimental video program and the live performance built around it, anchoring each night with the work that holds it together.
There is a particular kind of June in New York’s independent art world, when the calendar tightens, and the people who actually build immersive events stop sleeping. For Victoria Mussi, the Brazilian Audio Visual director who serves as Audio Visual Lead at SoMad, this June lands harder than most. Within twelve days, she will lead two of the most ambitious programs of her year. First, on June 13, she takes the helm as Audio Visual Director of SoMad So Queer, the platform’s Pride season opener, curated end-to-end by Amygdala, the same evening that marks the closing of MadWorld 2026. Then, from June 25 through 27, she will represent SoMad in the official program of Upstate Art Weekend, where the platform earned a place among hundreds of applications to present a hybrid film-and-performance evening with Upstate Films, the legendary Hudson Valley independent cinema founded in 1972.
The pairing of those two nights tells a story about Mussi’s practice that no single event could. SoMad So Queer is a multi-floor performance gathering anchored in drag, ballroom craft, and avant-garde performance, with a cohort whose press credits run from The New York Times to Hyperallergic. Upstate Art Films, by contrast, is a sit down cinema program inside one of the most respected arthouses in the state. The two could not look more different from the outside. Yet Mussi will design and execute the technical backbone of both, often within the same week.
SoMad So Queer, June 13
The first of June’s two engagements opens SoMad’s annual Pride program inside the SoMad building in Manhattan. SoMad So Queer 2026 is curated end to end by Amygdala, a figure widely recognized for assembling programs that bridge club culture, fine art, and political performance. Importantly, Amygdala has built a reputation for nights that pull together artists who rarely share a stage. For 2026, she has anchored the residency’s opening with a roster of radical and hyperreal voices.
The lineup reads like a survey of the most documented voices in New York’s contemporary queer performance scene. Ezra Moth, an interdisciplinary artist and current resident of the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, brings a sculptural and performative presence to the evening. Their recent work includes the solo exhibition “Megafauna” at Real Art Ways, and their practice has been featured in CT Examiner and on institutional platforms that explore queer ecology and avant drag. MTHR TRSA, a foundational figure in New York drag with press in The New York Times, Them, and The Girls Book, joins the experimental performance lineup, bringing institutional credibility from programming at La MaMa and a documented role in the Bushwig community. Reed Rushes, whose practice spans avant drag, performance, and visual art, contributes a performance shaped by international residencies at Can Serrat and 3HD Festival, as well as teaching credits at Abrons Arts Center.
The dance floor program is equally curated. Didi Opulence, profiled by Thotyssey for character-driven performance and a distinctive voice within the city’s experimental drag landscape, appears among the surprise dance floor performers. Paris L’Hommie, a drag performer and educator profiled by Brooklyn Magazine, contributes to the pop up performance program, drawing on a practice that extends from POC drag collectives in Brooklyn to academic work at Columbia University. Soo Intoit joins as a recurring figure across the city’s experimental club programming. Reina No Bueno, host and producer associated with Someday Bar, brings nightlife production craft to the floor. Kate Williams, with residencies at Otion Front Studio and the Center for Performance Research, completes the cohort with a practice that bridges sculpture, movement, and live performance.
For Victoria Mussi, the role in this program is total. As Audio Visual Director, she carries responsibility for the technical and aesthetic framework that holds the night together. She will design the lighting, the sound, and the spatial flow across multiple floors of the building. Because the audience will move through the space in waves, the technical plan has to feel both immersive and easy to navigate. Each performance also has different needs. Some artists want a softer, more cinematic register. Others require club grade lighting and sound reinforcement. Therefore, Mussi will translate all of those needs into one continuous evening.
The cohort also brings significant institutional weight. Together, the featured artists carry residencies at ISCP, Otion Front, CPR, Can Serrat, and Real Art Ways, and press coverage in PAPER Magazine, Them, Hyperallergic, Brooklyn Magazine, and CT Examiner. So Queer’s curatorial integrity, in other words, rests on a documented and serious roster. Mussi’s technical leadership inside that program places her at the center of one of the most carefully assembled queer performance nights of the city’s June calendar.
June 13 carries a second significance for SoMad. The same evening marks the closing of MadWorld 2026, one of the most important programs in the platform’s recent history. MadWorld 2026 has already been mounted and run successfully across its 2025–2026 edition, and on June 13 its closing event will unfold in conjunction with SoMad So Queer. Mussi’s connection to the program runs deep. She served on the Audio Visual direction team for the exhibition, where she was responsible for supporting the technical and spatial implementation of the program. She was also invited to join the jury for MadWorld’s Experimental Video selection for 2025–2026, working alongside other artists and curators through the final selection phase. That final selection is precisely what travels north later in the month, the through line connecting SoMad’s June 13 closing in Manhattan to its program upstate.
Upstate Art Films, June 25 through 27
Twelve days after the Pride program closes, Mussi shifts contexts entirely. From June 25 through 27, SoMad will appear in the official program of Upstate Art Weekend, having earned a place from hundreds of applications, with a hybrid program presented in partnership with Upstate Films.
That partnership alone carries significant institutional weight. Upstate Films is a not for profit independent arthouse cinema, founded in 1972 in Rhinebeck, New York, and long recognized as a cornerstone of Hudson Valley film culture. Over its first 53 years, the cinema has screened more than 7,000 titles to an estimated 2.6 million viewers, an unrivaled accomplishment for a rural arthouse in the United States. Its mission centers on making international and independent cinema as accessible and affordable as possible while maintaining the highest standards of presentation.
The cinema’s legacy runs unusually deep. Over the decades, Upstate Films has hosted New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, presented the first reading of Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory’s “My Dinner with Andre,” and brought filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, John Sayles, Todd Haynes, Errol Morris, Jim Jarmusch, and Debra Granik to its screens. In 2010, Upstate Films expanded into Ulster County and operated Tinker Street Cinema in Woodstock for a decade. Then in 2021, the organization acquired and restored the historic Orpheum Theatre in Saugerties, consolidating its position as one of the most important independent cinema institutions in New York State.
Inside this context, SoMad’s program will present the Experimental Video selection from MadWorld 25/26, the body of work Mussi helped jury during the final selection phase, paired with a live opening performance by Ester the Bipedal, woven directly into the screening environment. The night brings the program that closed in Manhattan on June 13 into dialogue with one of the most respected arthouses in the state.
For the opening performance, Mussi’s technical contribution is total. She will lead the complete installation, designing the sound system and signal flow, handling audio recording and mixing, and building a custom lighting design that frames the live work in dialogue with the screen. Importantly, the segment requires precise coordination between cinema-grade video playback, live performance sound reinforcement, and a lighting design that bridges the screening and the performance modalities.
The work will also take place outside the SoMad studio. Therefore, Mussi will adapt professional exhibition and performance infrastructure within the festival site, coordinating audio visual systems, lighting strategy, and live performance reinforcement across an unfamiliar venue. She has done that kind of off-site adaptation before. Yet the Upstate Art Weekend audience matters in a particular way. Collectors, curators, and cultural professionals will fill the room. Therefore, the technical execution is also, in practical terms, a representation of SoMad to the New York and Hudson Valley art communities.
A practice that lives in the seam
The two events together reveal something specific about Mussi’s practice. Inside SoMad So Queer, she works in a fast-moving performance environment where the technical framework must support sudden shifts in tone, sound, and movement. Inside Upstate Art Films, by contrast, she works in a deliberate cinema-grade environment, where the presentation of the Experimental Video selection and the live performance built around it must meet professional festival standards of playback, sound, and light. Few audio-visual directors are equally fluent in both modes. Mussi has built her career inside the seam between them.
Her framing of the work remains consistent with everything she has said in recent interviews. She views the technical contribution as inseparable from the artistic outcome, and she insists that crew members be named as authors of the work rather than service providers to it. In June, that philosophy will be tested at two very different scales. On June 13, she will hold an entire floor of queer performance together through cue work, lighting design, and signal flow, the same night SoMad closes MadWorld 2026. From June 25 through 27, she will deliver the technical environment for the Experimental Video program and build a live performance directly around it, to festival standards.
Each evening alone would represent a serious credit on any audio-visual director’s year. Together, they will likely define the first half of Victoria Mussi’s 2026. Furthermore, they offer a working preview of the practice she will carry through the rest of the year, into AIPAD with Yi Hsuan Lai and into NADA New York with Keith La Fuente. The same question runs through all of those engagements. Whether the room holds drag, photography, sculpture, or cinema, the technical artist who makes the work feel inevitable is increasingly Victoria Mussi.
Victoria Mussi Bio. Victoria Mussi is one of the most quietly influential audio-visual directors working in New York’s contemporary art ecosystem. A Brazilian multidisciplinary artist and producer, she specializes in the technical infrastructure that turns concepts into immersive experiences: lighting architecture, sound system design, DMX programming, projection networks, audio mastering, and full installation direction. Her practice grew from years of independent productions in Brazil, where she taught herself the craft from the ground up, and now anchors the technical backbone of SoMad in Manhattan, where she has served as Audio Visual Lead since 2025.
Across the international fair circuit, Mussi has designed environments at NADA New York and at Alcova during Milan Design Week, and she has collaborated with award-winning artists, including David Aliperti and Soraya Zaman. Her 2026 calendar places her at the center of SoMad’s most ambitious programming yet, including SoMad So Queer on June 13, New York Upstate Art Films at Upstate Art Weekend from June 25 through 27, AIPAD with Yi Hsuan Lai, NADA New York with Keith La Fuente, MadWorld, and the launch of a new international residency dedicated to musicians.