The Persephone Project
The Persephone Project uses the tools of the theater to create spectacular events that support community, environmental justice, and climate change activism. Through participatory pageants using story, song, drums, dance, costume, choreography, and beauty, Persephone weaves together mythic tales and true stories of conservation. Tria Smith is a performer, teacher, writer, and designer who has been creating theater in Chicago for the past 30 years. Smith has been working 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.
CALL FOR WORK / REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis
A Time-Based Collective Experience at 6018North
Deadline: April 21, 2026 at 11:59PM CST
Location: 6018North, Chicago
Lead Artist & Curator: Tria Smith & Tricia Van Eck
6018North invites artists and collectives to respond to the Myth of Persephone — as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses — through the lens of extraction and transformation. This RFP seeks artists, performers, and collectives interested in collaboratively developing a time-based, immersive experience that unfolds throughout the rooms and spaces of 6018North. Working in coordination with artist Tria Smith and curator Tricia Van Eck, selected artists will activate a room or spatial environment as part of a collective journey.
A public work July 17- 20 will guide audiences through the house in small groups, creating a beginning-to-end experiential passage through Persephone’s myth as it resonates to our present ecological, social, and spiritual realities. Work created is meant to remain on view for further tweaks and performances.
PAST ITERATIONS
Persephone’s Portal 2024-2026
Featured in Myth of the Organic City at 6018North
This installation reframes the artists’ inquiries on climate crisis, tactics of care, and collaborative practices. Tria Smith with Katrin Schnabl built an immersive interpretation of the myth of Persephone. You are invited to step into this passageway that connects two distinct realms of materiality. One is the underworld built from heat-extruded plastic; the other is the Upper World made of organic material. While they seem diametrically opposed they are intrinsically connected. We ask you to pause in between these two realms.
The artists are grateful to Calla Bordie for her ingenuity. Special thanks to Lanre Adetola, and Janet Yang.
Inorganic Materials: Post-consumer packaging waste such as fruit tree netting, chip and coffee bags, toothpaste tubes, water bottles, plastic bags, pull-off and other caps, materials made from fossil fuels into high density polyethylene netting or packaging, metalized polypropylene, multi-laminates including aluminum, paper, and polyethylene, and a variety of additional blends to achieve desired characteristics: polyethylene terephthalate, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, and polycarbonate. Natural Materials: Silk, Cotton Scrim, Linen, Wool, Rattan, Steel, Aluminum.
Plastic Bottles Collection 2023-2025
Featured in Water at 6018North
An installation composed of single-use plastic bottles retrieved from Osterman Beach and elsewhere. This work was accumulated from over two years of many public events of trash collection, cleaning, and care for our neighborhood beach. Working with Edgewater Environmental Coalition on recurring beach cleanups, Smith and 6018North are making visible the passive litter and waste that threatens our waterways in the Great Lakes and throughout the world's Oceans. Originally created for 6018North’s Water exhibition, it has been reconfigured by Lise Haller Baggesson and Eleanor Ross.
Water Music on the Beach: Persephone 2023
Lane Beach at 5915 N Sheridan Rd
Water Music on the Beach: Persephone was a collaboration between 6018North and Tria Smith, as part of ongoing research in sustainable strategies for Art Design Chicago 2024, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art investigating and elevating Chicago’s rich visual art and design histories and creative communities. Initiated in 2012, Water Music on the Beach series highlights Chicago’s proximity to Lake Michigan through compositions and scores that reflect, react to, or personify the sounds of water.
The performance began at 5:30 PM at Lane Beach with a sound wash by Sakai Parker. Neighbors who have been transforming trash into lanterns, gathered from monthly cleanups with Edgewater Environmental Coalition, will meet at 5:00 PM at the Broadway Armory and begin a procession to Lane Beach at 5:15 PM. Performers include Simon Anderson, Braeden Barnes and Michelle Meltzer, Whitney Bradshaw and OUTCRY participants, Coco Elysses, Elaine Lemieux, Ella Schultz, Angie Tillges, and Trevor Nicholas and the Senn High School Choir.
Trash Transformation: Wear the Street 2023
Featured in Can Circularity Save Us? for EXPO Chicago at Navy Pier
Can an individual or an exhibition halt increasing climate chaos? Who knows, but we will try. Using principles of circular design Adelheid Mers, Tria Smith, and Lan Tuazon demonstrate creative ways of (re)living. Through a range of interactive experiences, from trying on clothes to washing food packages, visitors are invited to rethink ideas about use, value, waste, and regeneration. The artists invited visitors to join in a circular approach, as we reimagine how to innovate and recirculate by simply thinking and acting differently.
Smith created streetwear fashions that transform everyday materials from trash to couture. Visitors are invited to harvest and clean plastic waste, and wear the transformed clothes. Tria’s Trash Transformation: Wear the Street includes clothes and accessories co-designed and built by Alex McDermott; jackets and circle purses co-designed and made by Lilith Parker; accessories co-designed by KHÔI; trash-foraging bags by Declan Flynn; and performance by Freyja Acassi.