The Persephone Project

Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis

A Time-Based Collective Experience at 6018North - 6018 N. Kenmore, Chicago, IL 60660

Session Two Rough Draft Exchanges

Works-in-Progress

Tuesday, July 21 from 7-9 PM

Friday, July 24 from 6-8 PM

Session Two Performances

Culminating Events!

Saturday, July 25 from 3-5 PM – Free RSVP

Sunday, July 26 from 7-9 PM – Free RSVP

The story of Persephone is both ancient and urgently contemporary. At its center is a cyclical journey between two realms — the Underworld and the Upperworld — descending into the darkness and emerging into the light..

This same movement shapes the residency itself. Selected artists enter a period of process and exchange — working 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.

Throughout the summer, 19 visual artists and performers are responding to the myth of Persephone through the lens of extraction and transformation. 12 are collaboratively developing a time-based, immersive experience that unfolds throughout the rooms and spaces of 6018North, while 7 are providing discrete works that invite or set the stage for performances and interactions. All are activating rooms or spatial environments as part of a single collective journey.

Each session culminates in a performative event — First Session: June 27–28 and Second Session: July 25–26 — that guides audiences through the house in small groups, creating a beginning-to-end experiential passage through Persephone's myth as it resonates with our present ecological, social, and spiritual realities. Extraction, here, is not only myth: it is the present condition of a warming, depleted earth, and transformation is not only Persephone's, but ours to make.

For audiences, the project extends that invitation outward. Moving through the designated spaces at 6018North, visitors are not simply observing a myth retold, but undergoing their own brief descent and return — entering the unresolved, the in-process, the unfamiliar, and emerging changed by what they encounter.

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.

seed chime for longshore drift, 2026 by Hailey Becker (foreground); Caught from the wind and anchored to the arch قوس قزح by Tom Burtonwood and Maryam Taghavi (background).

The project unfolds through a structured yet experimental collaborative process.

Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis is a collaborative 4D project — time-based, process-oriented, and spatial. This work draws on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Meg Stuart’s choreographic work, Crash Landing.  Artists are creating a range of the following:

  • An installation-based room activation

  • A short time-based performative work

  • A hybrid work that combines installation and performance

  • An experience or medium not contained within any one room 

  • A designed space which can be activated by someone in the session or later

While each work has its own integrity, all are developed in dialogue to contribute to a cohesive audience experience. The project prioritizes process, experimentation, and collective development. The emphasis is on creating a spatial and/or performative environment that contributes to a collective narrative arc.

The project originated with artist Tria Smith’s Persephone Project and builds upon Myth of the Organic City, 6018North’s recent exhibition exploring climate change through myth and the built environment. That inquiry continues here, extended into a fully collaborative, time-based form. Each artist brings their own interpretation of the myth, the moment we are in, and how to respond.

Mirroring the Persephone myth, we are in a moment of traversing into an unknowable future. At its heart Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis asks: in the midst of climate change, conflict, and widespread uncertainty, how do we come out of this moment and learn to work together rather than alone?

Session One of The Persephone Project features visual, installation, and performance artwork by the following artists: (left to right) Kyle Gregory Price, Lauren Reed, and Lizz Windnagel with Patrick Marschke. Bei Qi, Hailey Becker, Gray Snyder, and Raissa Bailey. 

Session Two of The Persephone Project features visual, installation, and performance artwork by the following artists: Lise Haller Baggesen, Kierah/KIKI King, Bobbi Meier and Steve Meier (top row) Eileen O'Halloran, Monika Plioptyl, Edyta Stepien, and Adriana Vignoli. Sound and video installations by Charles Krampah and William Raynovich (bottom row).

PAST ITERATIONS with Originating Artist Tria Smith:

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.

Past Persephone: Extraction & Metamorphosis events:

Rough Draft Exchanges - works in progress: Tuesday, June 23 - 7PM

Press:

Persephone Dinner: Chicago Classic Mag https://chicagoclassicmag.com/editions/2026-05-31/persephone-dinner/