YESHE (she/her)

YESHE is a Tibetan singer-songwriter and artist born and raised in Switzerland, based in New York City and Zurich. YESHE performed recently live at Basel Social Club at Art Basel and the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College.

Together, with the collective xenometok she developed 49 days, a multimedia music and dance performance theater piece, which premiered in 2022 at the Theaterhaus Gessnerallee in Zurich and was presented at L’Arsenic Les Urbaines in Lausanne and at the Kaaitheater/ Les Halles in Brussels. YESHE is currently working on her debut album.

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With Forbidden Songs, Tibetan singer-songwriter and artist YESHE embodies the voice for the voiceless singers and songwriters whose songs are forbidden to sing and perform in today’s Tibet. Singers and songwriters in Tibet have been and are still being imprisoned for writing and performing these songs of identity, social justice, displacement, freedom, and hope for the future and what it means to belong.

By collecting and learning these songs and being in dialogue with the singers, the artist activates the room with her voice and a set design reminiscent of symbols of the Tibetan flag, merging the past and present, and creating an extension of their voices to tell stories beyond oppression and across time and space.

This durational performance piece features YESHE’s solo voice joined at times by multiple Tibetan female voices to sing and repeat 10 forbidden songs. The songs are performed live in the Rubin’s theater and can be heard simultaneously via speakers in the spiral staircase and broadcasted on the Marina Abramović Institute’s YouTube channel.

This performance is co-curated by Marina Abramović and Michelle Bennett Simorella and made possible through the Marina Abramović Institute.

YESHE performed Forbidden Songs in the Rubin Theater on September 8, 15, and 22, 2024. Her co-performers included Tenzin Chunney, Rinchen, Pema Payang, Tsejin, Dechen Lhamo, Doka, Kunsang, Tsering Yangdol, and Ngawang Sangdrol.

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This object from the Rubin Museum’s collection is presented in the Reimagine exhibition in dialogue with Forbidden Songs, inviting new ways of encountering traditional Himalayan art.