ABOUT THE TEAM

IV CASTELLANOS is a Queer Trans* Bolivian-Indige/American, and an abstract performance artist and sculptor who creates solo, collaborative, and group-task vignette performances. They construct/deconstruct all their own objects in their performances, and/or in shared process and practice with their collaborators. In addition, they have a studio practice and create stand alone sculptures not meant to be activated by performances.

RAVEN CHACON is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.

ITOHAN EDOLOYI is a Brooklyn-born lighting designer whose work is deeply rooted in community and culture. Her work aims to continue storytelling in non-traditional ways, crafting meaningful experiences through the lens of light and immersion. Edoloyi is the lead curator for InLight Collective, an ongoing project surrounding the amplification of BIPOC voices. She has recently joined Kyle Marshall Choreography as its resident lighting designer and is also the resident light design coordinator for The Shed’s annual Open Call Series in NYC. Her work as a curator and light artist has been published by Rosco Spectrum and presented at JACK Arts and La MaMa Galleria. Edoloyi was awarded the 2021 Lilly Award and was the recipient of the 2018 Gilbert V. Hemsley Lighting Internship.

KORINA EMMERICH has built her Brooklyn-based brand, EMME Studio, on the backbone of Expression, Art and Culture, where ​items are made-to-order in their studio located on occupied Canarsee territories. She is leading the charge to embrace art and design as one, and weaving it into her brand story. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, her colorful work is known to reflect her patrilineal Indigenous heritage from The Coast Salish Territory, Puyallup tribe. Items are made from upcycled, recycled, and all-natural materials giving respect to the life cycle of a garment from creation to biodegradation. ​With a strong focus on social and climate justice while speaking out about industry responsibility and accountability: Emmerich works actively to expose and dismantle systems of oppression and challenge colonial ways of thinking. www.emmestudios.com 

HOLLY MITITQUQ NORDLUM is an Iñupiaq (Inuit) artist who comes from the northern village of Kotzebue, Alaska. Nordlum works in a variety of media, using each to best cast light on Indigenous people. Her tattoo work and traditional markings revitalization effort is based on a 10,000-year-old Inuit history and is a machine-free process that facilitates healing, pride, and celebration from the traumas of colonization and individual experience. She organizes trainings, using traditional patterns in in-depth sessions to foster real change for people—in the end, creating community in the marks left behind. Nordlum speaks publicly about the systems which continue to oppress her people and prevent their thriving. In 2004 she earned a BFA from the University of Alaska. She has received a Time Warner Fellowship with Sundance, an Art Matters grant, an Alaska Humanities Forum grant, an Alaska Native Visionary Award, a Rasmuson Artist Project Grant and Artist Fellowship, NDN Collective Indigenous Artists’ Grant and was part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Artist Leadership Program.

ASHLEY PIERRE-LOUIS is a Miami native. With education from New World School of the Arts and later from Florida State University, Pierre-Louis began to discover her passion for movement, the human form, and arts administration. Ashley is currently artistic administrative assistant for Shamel Pitts’ multidisciplinary performance collective TRIBE. Pierre-Louis has premiered the play Thoughts of a Colored Man by playwright Keenan Scott II and director Steve Broadnax III at Syracuse Stage and Baltimore Center Stage. She has performed for the premiere of Donna Uchizono’s work March Under an Empty reign at The Joyce: NY Quadrille Festival, and has also been apart of Alvin Ailey’s inaugural Choreography Unlocked Festival under the direction of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women, and Robert Battle. Ashley has attended the School at Jacob’s Pillow, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, as well as Gaga intensives in Tel Aviv and New York.

JASMINE SHORTY is a dancer and visual artist from, and based in, New Mexico. She is a member of the Navajo Nation. She was a performer and company member of Meow Wolf, Santa Fe’s celebrated immersive and interactive arts collective, from 2019–20. In 2018, she performed as a movement soloist in the Santa Fe Opera’s production of Doctor Atomic, choreographed by Emily Johnson and directed by Peter Sellars. 

JOSEPH SILOVSKY /  SILOVSKY STUDIOS has been constructing props, sets, and mechanical devices for the downtown performance art world since it was founded in 2015. They have worked with a variety of groups, including Catalyst Dance, Palissimo, Radiohole, The Wooster Group, AIM, Richard Maxwell, The Builders Association, and others.  Latest projects include the set for AIM’s Mozart Project, the motorized ring/ disc sculpture for Palissimo’s LUX PHANTASMATIS, the set for the Wooster Group’s The Mother, and the secret sound thankyous inside the donation cowboy boot for Gideon Irving’s Cowboy Tour.  

STACY LYNN SMITH is a neurodivergent, mixed race/Black dance/performance artist with an extensive background in butoh, improvisational forms and experimental theater, creating work through a unique lens of “Other”. Smith was recently awarded a Djerassi Residency to further develop their abstract memoir, RECKONING, a film being made in collaboration with Alex Romania. Smith enjoys collaborating as performer/improviser, director and choreographer across disciplines and genres with an array of talented artists including: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Saints of an Unnamed Country, Thaddeus O’Neil, Josephine Decker, Jill Sigman/thinkdance, Kathy Westwater and Jasmine Hearn. Member of artist/activist cohort, Body Politic. Principal butoh dancer with Vangeline Theater from 2008-2017. Main muse/collaborator of writer/director Michael Freeman from 2010-2016. Selected by Eva Yaa Asantewaa as part of the curatorial board for Black Womxn Summit. Smith is a Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water, an organization working to heal those affected by childhood sexual abuse.

CHLOE ALEXANDRA THOMPSON is a Cree, Canadian interdisciplinary artist and sound designer. Her work engages tactics of material minimalism to create site-specific installations that sculpt droning, maximalist experiences out of space and sound. Thompson’s work, often utilizing multichannel audio, HDLAs, or wave field synthesis installation, has previously been presented by MUTEK Montreal, Send + Receive Festival, and Quiet City (Canada); Hellerau (DE); British Council Arts and Somerset House for Amplify DIA (UK and Canada); Qubit (NY); On the Boards and Wayward Concert Series (WA); Subharmonic: Sonic Arts Symposium – PICA and Yale Union (OR), among many others. Thompson has participated in residencies at Pioneer Works (NY); HERVISIONS x Arebyte AOS residency (UK); and the Amplify residency in collaboration with Somerset House and MUTEK (UK).

MAGGIE THOMPSON was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013. As a textile artist and designer she derives her inspiration from the history of her Ojibwe heritage, exploring family history as well as themes and subject matter of the broader Native American experience. Thompson’s work calls attention to its materiality pushing the viewer’s traditional understanding of textiles. She explores materials in her work by incorporating multimedia elements such as photographs, beer caps and 3D-printed objects. In addition to her fine arts practice, Thompson runs a knitwear business known as Makwa Studio and is also an emerging curator of contemporary Native art, and has worked on curating special exhibits for Two Rivers Gallery, the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.

SUGAR VENDIL is a composer, pianist, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist based in Lenapehoking, known as Brooklyn. She started her artistic life as a classical pianist, and after spending nearly a decade searching for her own voice, her practice evolved into performances that integrates sound, movement, and unconventional approaches to the piano. She writes and performs her own solo music for piano and electronics and has a keyboard/synth duo, Vanity Project, with composer Trevor Gureckis. Vendil is a proud second generation Filipinx American. Vendil was awarded a 2021 MAPFund grant to support Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia. Recent commissions include Chamber Music America to write a new work for her ensemble, The Nouveau Classical Project, which she founded in 2008; ETHEL’s Homebaked 2019 for Unsacred Geometry, and ACF | Create to write for Box Not Found. 

RIVER WHITTLE is a two-spirit Caddo, Lenape, and white artist, youth mentor, and community organizer. Whittle aims to support Indigenous life, care, and revitalization with her work. She is learning to become a shell worker, metal worker, and potter, and is an experienced photographer.

GEORGE LUGG is a producer, curator and consultant who has been working in the field of contemporary dance and performance for more than 30 years. He serves on the faculty of the California Institute of Arts School of Theater, where he is also consulting producer for CalArts’ Center for New Performance. He works as an independent producer for artists Emily Johnson / Catalyst and Faye Driscoll. Current touring projects include Johnson’s Being Future Being, Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming: Space, Daniel Alexander Jones’ Altar no. 1, Nataki Garrett and Andrea LeBlanc’s The Carolyn Bryant Project, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol’s El Camino Donde Nosotros Lloramosm (The Road Where We Weep), among others. He has served twice as Lead Program Consultant in the Performing Arts for the Creative Capital Foundation (2012, 2020), was a Hub Site Representative for the National Dance Project, and on the U.S. curatorial team for the National Performance Network’s Performing Arts Asia, and Performing Americas Projects. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for Dance Camera West.

KEVIN HOLDEN is an artist, composer, and Administrative Steward for Emily Johnson and Catalyst. They are based on the traditional lands of the Clackamas, Cowlitz, the Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde, and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.