MIWA | Talie and Lunise Cerin
SHOWTIMES • NOV 7 @ 7PM | NOV 8 @ 7PM | NOV 9 @ 7PM
ICEBOX PROJECT SPACE • 1400 N American St, Philadelphia, PA 19122
about the show
MIWA, Haitian Creole for “mirror,” is a powerful new musical and visual experience from Haitian-American sisters 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.
about the artists
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about the artists •
Talie (Nathalie Cerin) is a Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter and cultural worker originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Her music, a mixture of Haitian folk and soul music, is a testament to the two cultures that have shaped her as an artist and woman. Accompanied by her trusty guitar, Talie sings to honor a rich and difficult past and to present hopeful visions for the future for anyone searching for peace. In 2019, Talie released “Solèy Midi,” a twinkling collection of original compositions and Haitian folk songs chronicling a journey to find the sun. Solèy Midi is available on all major music purchasing and streaming platforms.
Talie is also the Lead Editor and co-founder of Woy Magazine, an online platform that aims to serve as a meeting place for Haitians in Haiti and abroad. Woy's content is available in Kreyòl and English, exploring history, politics, and the arts through its blog, weekly newsletter, and multimedia projects.
Connect with Talie through Instagram, stream her album “Soléy Midi” and read Woy Magazine.
Lunise Cerin is a Writer, Director, Editor, and Story Producer from Port-au-Prince and Philadelphia. Cerin began her film career in Los Angeles at SVOD Black and Sexy TV, where she worked for seven years as a writer, director, editor, and producer across multiple seasons of web series produced by the network. In 2018, she moved back to Haiti and began working as a feature documentary editor and story producer, most recently on “The Fight For Haiti” (2024), directed by Etant Dupain. Cerin returned to the US and received an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University in 2024, where she was accepted with the Bridges Larson Fellowship. Her portfolio film VICTORINE is currently touring the festival circuit.
Cerin is currently in post-production for her directorial debut, the documentary film "Miwa," a project that received support from the William Penn Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and IPMF. After graduating from Columbia, Cerin began to pursue her second passion, education and community media making.
Stay up to date with Lunise on her Instagram, and visit the Miwa project’s website.
Nia Benjamin is a Black agender, queer director of experimental theatre and multidisciplinary artist— working in film, projection and installation designer, video arts . Their work uses the synthesis of dance, poetry, live music, theatre and video arts to create live performances about the sovereignty, liberation and interiority of Black and Brown, queer and trans* people. Nia is the Co-Artistic Director of Ninth Planet, a Philadelphia based experimental theatre company that makes original works of performance that centers people of color, women, queer and trans* people. Recent credits include: Fallawayinto (2025, Director) On Buried Ground (2024, Director/Co-Creator), Esto No Tiene Nombre by Denice Frohman (2023, Projection and Production Designer), high noon (2024, Director, Co-Creator).
You can follow Nia on their Instagram page.