The Elastro series has an incredibly special event planned for March. agua viva is a collective performance by Elise Butterfield, Sofía Gabriel, Anna Johnson, Jonty Paul, and Veronica Anne Salinas that weaves together sound, movement, and live video processing. agua viva draws inspiration from the natural flow of water and the possibilities of the human body. Throughout the piece, the performers’ improvisational movements and sound gestures are translated live into evolving visual projections. This interplay between movement, sound and visuals creates a dynamic conversation between performers and immerses the audience in an aquatic dreamscape.

We’ll also have a solo performance from Mauricio López F. and Colectivo Polvos Rojos.
CPR are two Colombian artists who migrated from Bogotá to Chicago. They met outside our mother territory in studios stained by red powder: Achiote (a tropical seed from the “global South”) and red chalk powder. Gabriela chews and stares into the eyes of Achiote to invoke secular prayers of the maternal language. At the same time, Pablo draws omens with red chalk powder, engaging with spaces’ rituals and the ideologies that haunt and inhabit them. Their practices pose urgent questions-actions about migration, territorial acknowledgment, and food sovereignty. Their material explorations (spells) denounce the relationship of power and domination with which the patriarchal-colonial-capitalist system has made us forget that Earth is a sacred womb. They will continue to challenge the ideals of “progress” that have affected our territories and Latin American diasporas.

This growing collective invites people to remember the importance of having soil in the mouth.

$15 / $10 w/ Student ID – Tickets Available at the Door

Artist Bios

Sofía Gabriel is a performance artist and dancer from Mexico City, based in Chicago. Trained in classical and contemporary dance, her practice evolved from technique-focused work to exploring improvisation and play. Exploring experimental dance to engage in somatic dialogues with sound, painting, and new media. She believes in feminism as a body-centered resistance to patriarchy, aiming to forge new discourses that can be equitable and just for all humans.Her practice consists in creating, performing or facilitating collective actions or cathartic experiences that can foster healing, connection, and collaboration for social change.

Jonty Paul is from Kolkata, India, and is pursuing a PhD in Physics at the University of Chicago. Jonty explores various forms of visual arts. He has worked extensively on documentary films as a cinematographer and has served as a visual manager of bands. Currently, he enjoys experimenting with new technologies, creating visual projects in virtual reality, and live interactive experiences using stereoscopic techniques.

Elise Butterfield is a mover, curator, and arts administrator. All of her work is informed by her commitment to live arts, accessibility, collaboration, and meaningful engagement between artists and audiences.

Anna Johnson is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist whose sound practice explores the materials of voice, synthesizer and electronic processing in order to render embodied auditory landscapes. She draws from her backgrounds in Western classical, traditional and devotional choral musics and engages improvisation, drone-based minimalism and layered repetition in pursuit of altered states of consciousness. She seeks to bring her audiences into a space of curiosity and active attention that requires full sensory participation and presence.

Mauricio López F. is a Chilean artist and composer whose practice relies on the transformative potential of sound, selecting and modifying it to create meaningful experiences. Building on his music background, he has evolved into a broader engagement with sound, often drawing from his South American roots and incorporating sardonicism that navigates the absurd.

Currently, he explores various mediums within sonic arts, including sound sculptures, performances with non-traditional instruments, and graphic scores. By combining sound with visual and kinetic elements, he challenges the listening situation, providing a more complex sensory experience that leads to an intricate set of codes and significations. His works address themes such as translation, communication misunderstandings, labor, and living in different contexts. They are deeply connected to the physical and social spaces he inhabits, revealing latent political and cultural content.

His pieces have been presented in Peru, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and the United States. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, supported by the New Artist Society Scholarship and the Chilecrea Scholarship from the Chilean Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage.

Gabriela Estrada Loochkartt is a Colombian artist based in Chicago. She graduated from the Art Department at the University of the Andes (Colombia, 2020), where her thesis project received Meritorious recognition. For this project, Gabriela received funding from the Research and Creation Center. She is pursuing a Master’s degree in the Fibers and Materials department at SAIC, where she was awarded the Joan Livingstone Scholarship.

Her solo exhibitions Vientre Tierra (2023, Colombia), Conversaciones con la Tierra (2022, Colombia), and La palabra casa tiene dos techos (2021, Colombia) were held at galleries such as La Cometa, Policroma, and SGR. She has exhibited at the X International Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art, Casa Diego Rivera Museum (México), Tertulia Museum (Colombia), ARTBO International Fair (Colombia), Salón Comunal (Colombia), La Balsa Arte (Colombia), Atrio (Colombia), Lugar Usual (México), Compound Yellow (Chicago), Mayfield Space (Chicago), and the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago).

Recently, she was nominated for the Sara Modiano Award and collaborated with Artesanías de Colombia in the Arte Vivo initiative. She was invited to the Mundo Común Residency (Colombian Amazon), where she is participating actively. Currently, she is preparing an exhibition for the Arts Week in Mexico City and was invited to an exhibition at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México UNAM).

Pablo Lazala Ruiz is a Colombian independent artist, architect, exhibition designer, and educator living and working in Chicago, IL. He recently received his MFA degree (2024) through the sculpture department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born and raised in Bogotá (1992), he received a BFA (2016, Honorable Mention: Meritorious undergraduate degree project) and a Ba.arch (2019) degree at the University of the Andes in Colombia. In 2020, he was a grant winner of the Independent Spaces Residency granted by Bogotá’s District Institute for the Arts at the Bank of the Republic Museum of Art with the project Ghosts and Paratext created with artists and curators Natalia Gutierréz Montes and Inés Arango Guingue. In 2022, he received the New Artist Society scholarship for MFA graduate studies.

He has presented projects in solo and group exhibitions in collaboration with spaces like the National Museum of Mexican Art (Chicago), Museum of the Bank of the Republic (Bogotá), The Wrong Biennale (Alicante/Bogotá), Santa Fé District Gallery (Bogotá), Compound Yellow (Chicago), Espacio Odeón (Bogotá), Espacio Más Allá (Bogotá), Nueveochenta, Liberia and SGR galleries (Bogotá) and Chapinero ArteCámara Gallery in Bogotás Chamber of Commerce. Since 2019, he has worked as an exhibition designer, art producer, and installation coordinator for the Colombian LA-based artist and educator Carolina Caycedo with projects in institutions like MoMA (NY), Bush Intercontinental Airport (Houston, TX), Serpentine Gallery (London, UK), The Sydney Bienalle (Australia), MCA (Chicago, IL), Oxy Arts (Los Angeles, CA), among others.

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Tags: Anna Johnson, Chicago, Colectivo Polvos Rojos, Elastic Arts, Elastro Series, Elastro: agua viva, Elise Butterfield, Gabriela Estrada Loochkartt, Jonty Paul, Logan Square, Mauricio López F., Pablo Lazala Ruiz, Sofía Gabriel, Veronica Anne Salinas