the P e o p l e
Self portrait in photobooth
E r y k a D e l l e n b a c h is an artist based in Brooklyn with Chicago roots. She is motivated by the palpability of corporeal and psychological thresholds, which she perceives as being malleable locations of consciousness. Eryka creates sensual film and performance works with a strong focus on sound design that explore consent, female rivalry, power and relationships. Dellenbach earned a bachelor degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing on cross-cultural, psychoanalytic-anthropology and was introduced to the moving image by Deborah Stratman via 16mm film. Disillusioned with her major, she began a long process of reevaluating and questioning the lenses of Anthropology and Psychoanalysis, discerning between what to take and reject from them in her work and process. After a period of living in a communal art space and making trans-disciplinary performances in the context of Chicago's experimental DIY art communities, she went on to earn a master’s in Film from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has worked with and performed in the works of an eclectic variety of dance/performance artists including Tori Wränes, Atsushi Takenouchi, Matty Davis, Blair Thomas Puppet Theatre and Tino Sehgal. Eryka has presented work at the Virginia Commonwealth University, Intuit Outsider Art Museum, The Art Institute Museum of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Defibrillator, Links Hall, No Nation Gallery, and internationally in Italy, Germany and Russia at the Shiryaevo Bienalle of Contemporary Art. She works as a freelance filmmaker, performer and an instructor of celluloid filmmaking at MONO NO AWARE in Brooklyn. She is both the director and a performer of Make the Brutal Tender.
Image by Alison Green
H a n n a E l l i o t t (HOGG) Hanna Elliott is a Chicago based performance, sound, and visual artist that hails from Atlanta, Georgia. Her interest in Dionysian art is reflected in the meditative, crude, and absurdist use of voice , body, and rhythm to probe states of trauma and ecstasy. Elliott received her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014 and currently performs live musical instruments and designs electronic sound for the groups, HOGG and Abstructum. In 2016 she released two albums on vinyl with ‘HOGG’ entitled ‘Carnal Lust & Carniverous Eating’ and ‘Solar Phallic Lion,’ and one self-titled album on cassette with Abstructum in 2017. Elliott has collaborated with sound artists Andy Ortmann (Panicsville) and Connor Camburn (Lituus) and as HOGG has collaborated with visual artists Elijah Burgher, Rebecca Walz and Ryan Pfieffer and movers, Eryka Dellenbach and Antibody Corporation. She is a sound collaborator and performer in Make the Brutal Tender.
N o l a S p o r n S m i t h is a dance & theater artist from Brooklyn, NY. She was recently nominated for a “Bessie” Outstanding Performer Award for her work in Stacy Grossfield’s metamorphosis, and has also performed with Donna Uchizono Company, cakeface, Eryka Dellenbach, Emily Smith, Kensaku Shinohara and others. Her solo work has been presented in New York, Detroit and Berlin. She has been collaborating with Molly Ross as MOLLY&NOLA since July 2017, and their performances and installations have been presented throughout NYC, in Philadelphia and in New Mexico, where they were recently artists-in-residence at the Keshet Dance and Center for the Arts in Albuquerque. Nola has also worked in assistant director and production assistant roles for multiple directors and choreographers (recently Kathy Westwater; Jim Findlay), and has choreographed on students at Queens College. Nola received her BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan
Photo by Effy Grey
