KITTY CA$H OPENS ENERGY RESERVE SYSTEMS AT DENIM TEARS

Kitty Ca$h spent the Fourth of July weekend inside Denim Tears' SoHo storefront, not DJing a party but opening Energy Reserve Systems, an exhibition about memory and sound built around a single piece called Vessel Study 001. The show, on view at 176 Spring Street through August 4, is the first time the Brooklyn DJ born Cachee Livingston has put her name on a gallery installation instead of a mix. It borrows its central question, what could a vessel be, from a Venice Biennale keynote, and answers it with a telephone hotline instead of a wall label.

Vessel Study 001 Runs Through August 4 in Denim Tears' SoHo Space

Energy Reserve Systems opened inside Denim Tears' 176 Spring Street location over the July 4 weekend and runs through August 4, 2026, making it a five week installation rather than a one night activation. The centerpiece, Vessel Study 001, combines audio from Kitty Ca$h's Human Mixtape series with visual works including a piece titled Give Them Their Flowers.

Denim Tears, the label Tremaine Emory built around cotton wreath graphics and American labor history, has increasingly used its SoHo storefront as gallery space rather than pure retail, and Energy Reserve Systems continues that pattern. The brand pushed the same cotton wreath motif into fine jewelry for its Spring Summer 2026 collection, proof that Emory treats the storefront and the archive as one continuous project rather than separate product lines. The show sits inside a working store, meaning its audience is whoever walks in to shop, not just an opening night guest list.

Cachee Livingston Has Been Kitty Ca$h Since Kilo Kish's Tour Bus

Kitty Ca$h, born Cachee Livingston in Brooklyn and trained at the Fashion Institute of Technology, got her start DJing for singer Kilo Kish before opening for The Internet and, later, Skrillex across Europe. She has since DJed for Rihanna, A$AP Rocky, Migos, and Solange, and played sets inside the Guggenheim, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney, and MoMA PS1.

That museum circuit history is why Energy Reserve Systems reads as a natural next step rather than a stretch. Livingston has spent a decade proving a DJ set can hold a room built for fine art. This exhibition asks whether her name alone can now anchor one.

Christina Sharpe Asked What a Vessel Could Be in Venice. Kitty Ca$h Answered in SoHo.

Christina Sharpe, a Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at York University, delivered What Could a Vessel Be as her keynote for the 2022 Venice Biennale's Meetings on Art series. Vessel Study 001 takes that exact question as its premise and answers it with sound, referencing Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line, the shipping company Garvey founded in 1919 to connect the African diaspora economically.

Reading a shipping line built for self determination against a piece about failure being part of the human experience is a specific, researched choice, not a mood board reference. It is the kind of citation that separates an artist quoting theory from an artist who actually read it.

Call the Hotline. Leave Someone Their Flowers.

Anyone can dial the 1 800 Give Them Their Flowers hotline and leave an anonymous voice note thanking someone, and those messages live permanently on the Energy Reserve Systems website alongside research archives and the evolving Vessel Studies. That is the entire delivery mechanism, a toll free number instead of a comment section.

The hotline turns the exhibition into an open ended dataset. Every visitor who calls adds another layer to Vessel Study 001 without ever setting foot in the SoHo store, which means the piece keeps growing after the physical show closes on August 4. It is a similar impulse to the one behind Derrick Adams explaining to Gagosian how television built his own visual language, another artist turning a personal archive into the actual subject of the work rather than background material.

A DJ Resume That Now Reads Like Three Careers

Energy Reserve Systems works because Kitty Ca$h did not treat theory as garnish. A Venice Biennale keynote, a 1919 shipping line, and a toll free hotline are not the ingredients of a typical merch adjacent pop up, and Denim Tears gave her five weeks and a real storefront to prove they belong together.

The DJ who opened for Skrillex across Europe and closed sets inside MoMA PS1 just added gallery artist to a resume that already covers touring, production, and museum programming. Vessel Study 001 is the first piece with her name alone on the wall label, and it will not be the last.