Chicago Performs: September 26–29, 2024

Lykanthea is the project of multidisciplinary artist Lakshmi Ramgopal. Experimenting with traditional South Asian art forms, she creates performances and installations in spaces that range from museum galleries to botanical conservatories to the middle of a freshwater stream. Her 2014 EP Migration put her on the map among experimental and pop music fans for her alchemical use of synths, catchy melodies, and Carnatic improvisatory techniques. Her work has been commissioned by Krannert Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Experimental Sound Studio, and Edgar Miller Legacy.

Lin Hixson, director, and Matthew Goulish, dramaturg, formed Every house has a door in 2008 to convene diverse, intergenerational project-specific teams of specialists, including emerging as well as internationally recognized artists. Drawn to historically or critically neglected subjects, Every house creates performance works and performance-related projects in many media. Based in Chicago, the company presents work for local, national, and international audiences.

Essi Kausalainen’s works operate through performance, textile, text, audio and video. Collaborating with plants and fungi, artists, musicians, plant biologists and children, Kausalainen’s work approaches the body as an open-ended process made in, and shaped by, the complex relations with other beings, situations and environments. Her work has been exhibited and performed in venues such as Kiasma, HAM, Inkonst (Malmö), Somerset House Studios in London, Bildmuseet (Umeå) and Moderna Museet Malmö.

cat mahari‘s practice is built from a richly layered body history, stemming from an archive of research, physical training, and intent to manifest an intellectual, material, and informal legacy of Black liberation through documentation. By examining personal marks and socio-genealogical maps, she explores inner and outer environments. She is a 2023 MAP Fund microgrant recipient, and a 2022 Foundation for the Arts Emergency grantee for blk ark: the impossible manifestation. Her upcoming works include the film, Sugar in the Raw, a surrealist-inspired exploration of Black intimacy, trust, and touch via Chicago house dance and stepping. In 2021, she was named the City of Chicago Esteemed Artist Awardee in Dance and received a 2021 3Arts Award in dance. mahari holds a BFA in dance from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an MA in performance, practice, and research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London.