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 multidisciplinary lighting designer whose work is 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. Her work ranges from installation and public works to lighting designs for experimental theater to theater, dance and events. Itohan has co-curated Lincoln Center’s Social Sculpture Project alongside scenic designer, Mimi Lien and is the lead curator for InLight Collective. Her work as an artist has been presented at JACK Arts, LaMAMA Galleria and Brooklyn Arts Terminal and as curator published by Rosco Spectrum and mentioned in Vogue Philippines. Itohan was the recipient of the 2021 Lilly Award and was the recipient of the 2018 Gilbert V. Hemsley Lighting Internship. More at itohanedoloyi.com.

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 originally from Miami, FL. She attended New World School of the Arts and later Florida State University, where she graduated with a BFA in dance. She is currently a dance artist and creator freelancing and exploring choreography in New York City. When making, she asks herself and audiences to imagine what our physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us is, and how we can share them collectively, in order to create a sense of freedom in the mind and body. She currently performs with Shamel Pitts’ multidisciplinary performance collective TRIBE, Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance, and Edisa Weeks’ DELIRIOUS Dances. She is also the Dream Partner & Program Manager for Florida State University’s Arts in NYC program, as well as the Artist Services Associate for Performance Space New York (PS 122). She has worked as the dramaturg for Shamel Pitts | TRIBE's work Touch of RED & the Associate Choreographer for the play Help (2022) by acclaimed poet and playwright Claudia Rankine. She was named one of Gallim’s 2021 Moving Women spring artist-in-residence & received a professional apprenticeship for the Dance Division at the Juilliard School (2020).

BRANDI NORTON (Iñupiaq) is a curator and dancer based in Rhinebeck, New York. She currently works as curator of public programs at Bard’s Center for Indigenous Studies. She holds a BFA in dance from the Juilliard School, and an M.S.Ed in early childhood education from Bank Street Graduate School. She works to bring Indigenous artists, educators and thought leaders to Bard college for public facing events. Before joining the Center for Indigenous Studies, she co-founded the dance company OtherShore, and was a dancer in the Trisha Brown Dance Company for nine seasons. Norton also had the privilege of being an elementary school teacher in New York City.

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, Black multiracial performing artist, choreographer, director and Green Circle Keeper at Hidden Water (by and for those affected by childhood sexual abuse) whose practice synthesizes various lineages of improvisational forms, somatics, experimental theater and butoh. Dedicated to collaboration, Smith creates, devises, improvises and performs across disciplines and genres with an array of talented artists: DeForrest Brown Jr., Anna Homler, Karen Bernard, Thaddeus O’Neil, Rakia Seaborn, Vangeline Theater (2008-2017), Michael Freeman, Saints of an Unnamed Country, Salome Asega, GENG, Donna Costello, Bradley Bailey, Michele Beck, Jasmine Hearn, mayfield brooks, Jill Sigman, Kathy Westwater, Josephine Decker, Emily Johnson, Peter Born, Okwui Okpokwasili and more. Smith's work has been presented at Movement Research at the Judson Church, Socrates Sculpture Park, 92StY, Performance Mix Festival, Snug Harbor Dance Festival, CAVE, St. Augustine's Church via Abrons Arts Center, Rosekill, Glasshouse and more.

As Psychic Wormhole (with Alex Romania), Smith is creating their abstract memoir, RECKONING, the duo's first feature film. Smith is a 2022-2024 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence and 2024 Djerassi AIR.

SONYA WELL-OFF-MAN is a multidisciplinary sound artist who explores the boundaries of sound, space, and perception. She creates noise music, sound design, and sound installations that challenge the conventional notions of music and art while exploring interpersonal phenomena between the listener and sound by creating works that focus on distorting the sense of time and evoking a sense of disquiet Ness through a variety of media including installations, video, and sound to create an immersive experience with oneself.

Her work is influenced by experimental, industrial, and ambient genres, as well as by the sounds of nature and urban environments.

As a recent graduate of CalArts, Sonya began composing contemporary chamber music and operas in 2018 after having a disdain for the standard cello repertoire at the time. While experimenting with the ideals of objective sound and the purity of noise she creates soundscapes that are devoid of personability meant to exist on their own in order to deal with the disembodied worldliness of reality.

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  (she/they) is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist who is forging new creative pathways as a second generation Filipinx American and future ancestor.  She started her artistic life as a classical pianist, and after spending nearly a decade searching for her own voice, her practice evolved into making music and performances that integrate sound, movement, and unconventional approaches to the piano. She has a keyboard/synth duo, Vanity Project, with composer Trevor Gureckis. Vendil is based in Lenapehoking, known as Brooklyn, where she lives with her partner and toddler, who she hopes will pursue dance and volleyball but will not force him/them. 

Vendil’s work germinates from a kinesthetic and improvisatory approach rooted in lived experiences. Her sense of physicality and artistic autonomy is evident in her work, whether it is music, performance, or visual scores.

Vendil was awarded a 2022 NPN Creation Fund grant and 2021 MAP Fund grant to support Antonym: the opposite of nostalgia, which is being co-commissioned by Living Arts Tulsa, High Concept Labs, and National Sawdust. Antonym is a finalist for NEFA’s NTP Creation and Touring Fund. 

Commissions include music for 3.1 Phillip Lim’s F/W 2024 show, Simple Tasks 2 on Jennifer Koh’s Grammy-award winning album Alone Together; a Chamber Music America commission to write for The Nouveau Classical Project; ETHEL’s Homebaked 2019, and ACF | Create. She scored films by Jih-E Peng’s May We Know Our Own Strength (2021) and GATHER (2023), both art films centered on works by visual artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya, and The Rite of Spring (2024), written and directed by Nick Nocera. In early 2024, her visual scores were part of the National Arts Club’s 2020 Fellows group exhibition, Light, Line, and Sound. She showed two ink-on-paper scores, and trapunto etude (2024), a beaded and embroidered canvas score inspired by the art of Pacita Abad.

Vendil loves dancing and collaborating with other makers. She is part of choreographer Emily Johnson/CATALYST’s Being Future Being and was a musical collaborator with treya lam for Marie Lloyd Paspe and Almasphere’s bumalik. Vendil composed the music for Phil Chan’s Ballet des Porcelaines in 2021, and premiered composer-saxophonist Darius Jones’ LawNOrder at The Stone and Being Caged in ICE at Roulette in 2018. This year, she is dancing in Adrienne Westwood’s [ ]. Her album, May We Know Our Own Strength, is out on Gold Bolus Recordings.

Vendil is an advocate of the oxford comma, is obsessed with her (late) cat Coco, and has an excellent memory.

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.