Please join 6018North on Saturday, July 25th from 3-5pm and 26th from 7-9pm for immersive performative events that take you on a journey exploring the myth of Persephone.

Interpreting the myth through our present ecological, social, and spiritual realities, nine artists have created installations, experiences, and performances throughout 6018North that draw audiences into a cyclical journey between the Underworld and the Upperworld: a descent into darkness and an emergence into the light of transformation.

You are invited into the performances through a series of participatory immersive environments, experiencing the myth not as a fixed narrative, but as a living passage shaped by the artists’ interpretations, where themes of loss, extraction, renewal, and collective possibility unfold. Artists encourage audiences to join in collective movement, reflect on personal experiences, wear costumes, and imbibe in refreshments inspired by the myth, depending on your level of involvement.

These performances are the result of an Open Call based residencies responding to the myth of Persephone through the lens of extraction and transformation. This July session of artists have worked in dialogue, sharing unfinished material, allowing their work to be changed by what surrounds it — before returning to the light in two evenings of public performance. Like Persephone’s passage between worlds, the residency does not separate the dark from the bright; it treats both as necessary stages of the same journey.

Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis Session Two features performances by resident artists Lise Haller Baggesen, Kierah/KIKI King, Bobbi Meier and Steve Meier, Eileen O’Halloran, Monika Plioplyte, and Adriana Vignoli. The event also includes video and sound work by Charles Krampah, William Raynovich, and Jonah Rapino.

Additional works on view from the exhibition Myth of the Organic City are by artists Rebecca Beachy with Christine Wallers, Eugenia Cheng, Carl Fuldner and Shane DuBay, Brian Holmes and Jeremy Bolen, Candace Hunter, Matthew Kaplan, Jin Lee, Nathan Lewis, Luftwerk, Viet Phan, Eleanor Ross, Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty, Tria Smith and Katrin Schnabl, Amanda Williams, and Sangwoo Yoo.

Link to Saturday Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/persephone-extraction-metamorphosis-a-time-based-collective-experience-tickets-1993931625166

Link to Sunday Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/persephone-extraction-metamorphosis-a-time-based-collective-experience-tickets-1993935395443

Session Two artists bios:

Lise Haller Baggesen lives and works in Chicago, by way of Amsterdam. Her hybrid practice includes writing, painting, installation, performative, sartorial, and textile-based work. Baggesen is an alumna of Billedskolen, Copenhagen, AK in Enschede (BFA PTDW), the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, SAIC (MAVCS), and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Kierah “KIKI” King is a dancer whose passion for justice, activism,
and community-building emerges in her choreographic work. She is an independent movement artist, director, and organizer with a commitment to connecting and advancing the dance field and community. King graduated from Columbia College Chicago, receiving a BFA in Dance with a Minor in Black World Studies. King has presented her choreographic work at the Centre National De La Danse and premiered her work HA(B*tch)ually at Columbia College Chicago and the American College Dance Association.

Charles Krampah started his career as a photographer in Ghana and is currently pursuing an MFA in Film, Video, New Media at SAIC. His work uses video and portraiture as a mode of coming to terms with feelings of displacement and connection to Americans of the African diaspora. As an African artist living in America, he employs mythological themes to explore elements of his psyche and investigate his relationship with his environment. His practice aims to develop a prophetic myth of existence, a process of individuation, and capture the experience of being away from home and its impact on his relationships, self-perception, and faith.

Bobbi Meier’s work is guided by memories of sex, secrets, and surgery, as she explores desire and embarrassment toward the body, domesticity and the family, awkwardness and humor in abstract forms. These themes, and the sadness of disguising discomfort, anger, and pain with situations that cannot be changed, connect to uncomfortable events from her childhood and role as a lifelong caregiver. Her abstract sculptures, drawings, and installations reflect the complexity of her lived experiences. They are emotional repositories for the feelings we hide and thoughts that remain unspoken.

Steve Meier is a multi-disciplinary artist and designer whose creative pursuits span drawing, painting, sculpture, furniture, and fashion. His studio practice allows him to explore a variety of artistic disciplines and environments, a companion to his decades-long career in commercial design and architecture. His extensive experience in sustainable design and architecture informs his studio work, where he actively collaborates with his wife Bobbi Meier for installation and production. Meier’s current body of work delves into concepts of transformation and sanctuary. He uses the experiences of physical and emotional transformation to express the duality and temporality inherent in human existence.

Eileen O’Halloran is a writer, editor, and teller of stories, working with students and adults to share their stories in applications and essays. Holding a PhD, she taught at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and DePaul University. She is the former managing editor of The Beckett Circle and worked at the Gate Theatre as the Associate Coordinator of the Beckett Festival, and did set design and styling for a Chicago production company for five years. She also served as a consultant in the development of Not I: A Samuel Beckett Centenary Celebration exhibition at the MCA, Chicago. Eileen is thrilled to be part of this project.

Monika Plioplyte’s narrative collages combine mixed media to form a pictorial interlanguage grounded in nature, folk symbolism, and the body. She is interested in myth as encoded knowledge, relating to our connection to the earth, spiritual beliefs, and the uncanny. She uses herself as both subject and object, working through her body as a site of exploration and a living work in progress. Whether developing textile-inspired patterns as metaphors for memory and language, creating self-portraiture rooted in everyday observation, or reinterpreting folk symbols, Plioplyte brings together personal and collective mythologies to explore human psychology and the forces that shape perception, belief, and the contradictions and desires of modern life.

William Jason Raynovich is a performer specializing in works of experimental composition. He works with the open-source visual programming language, Pure Data, to create interactive compositions using notational systems and a series of unconventional instruments built in collaboration with artist Rebecca Reineke. These compositions, including tre’, and his cello solo piece, now for cello and computer, explore self-similarity systems with audio processing. Raynovich’s compositions have been performed at national festivals as well as many venues local to Chicago.

Adriana Vignoli is a Chicago-based artist who engages with biological materials, bodily forces, and human histories to create elemental and sculptural reconfigurations. By intervening in diverse geographical territories—from Brazilian Quilombo communities to U.S. deserts—she blends materials like soil, water, fire, and metal to connect planetary and global histories. Her work activates energetic encounters and historical re-meanings, challenging the boundaries between the visible and the unseen. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

Originating artist:
Tria Smith is a performer, teacher, writer, and designer who has been creating theater in Chicago for the past 30 years. Smith has worked collaboratively with 6018North and an expanding network of artists and community members to create ceremonies of place and join in chorus with nature to address the environmental issues of today. Tria Smith’s The Persephone Project creates spectacular works that support community, environmental justice, and climate change activism. This summer program responds to its many iterations, which weave together mythic tales and true stories of conservation.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: 6018NORTH, Adriana Vignoli, Amanda Williams, Bobbi Meier and Steve Meier, Brian Holmes and Jeremy Bolen, Candace Hunter, Carl Fuldner and Shane DuBay, Charles Krampah, Edgewater, Eileen O'Halloran, Eleanor Ross, Eugenia Cheng, Jin Lee, Jonah Rapino, Kierah “Kiki” King, Lise HALLER BAGGESEN, Luftwerk, Matthew Kaplan, Monika Plioplyte, Nathan Lewis, Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis: A Time-Based Collective Experience, Pierre-Alexandre Savriacouty, Rebecca Beachy with Christine Wallers, Sangwoo Yoo, Tria Smith and Katrin Schnabl, Viet Phan, William Raynovich