Our artists represent new and unique voices within the artistic community. They bring a diverse set of perspectives and approaches.
Norman Long
Norman W. Long (b. 1973, Chicago, IL) is a sound artist/designer/composer based in Chicago, IL. His current work focuses on sound art production within the larger context of landscape. The processes involved in his practice lie within the area of field recording, electro-acoustic composition and ...
"I'm grateful for the opportunity to share my work and reflections on this community through soundscape composition and gardening. I've had so many ideas about sound, landscape and gardens, to have just one idea realized feels great."
Nnenna Okore
Born in Australia and raised in Nigeria, Nnenna Okore has received international acclaim for her richly textured abstract sculptures and installations. Known for their environmental ties, her breathtaking works explore the fragility and ephemerality of terrestrial existence. Through photography, ...
I’m inspired by forms, topographies, and phenomena related to place, memory, time, and language.
Nia Easley
Nia Easley received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute with a focus in Visual Communication Design. She is an artist creating works that address issues of visibility, accessibility, urban migration, social justice and data visualization.
I create work that address issues of visibility, accessibility, urban migration, social justice and data visualization.
Balas & Wax
Balas & Wax is the ongoing collaborative art practice of Susy Bielak and Fred Schmalz, whose work focuses on the gravity and strangeness of contemporary cities. Their research draws from ethnography, journalism, and academic research, mining text and visual references, and looking for unexpectedâ...
Balas & Wax acknowledges our family histories and our interest in the tangible and the poetic.
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky
Karina Aguilera Skvirsky is a multi-disciplinary artist who works in photography, video and performance. Karina’s half-hour, performance-based film, The Perilous Journey of MarĂa Rosa Palacios, documents her travel from Ecuador’s Chota highlands to the coastal town of Guayaquil. The expediti...
My name in a way is a good entry point to have a discussion about my work and where I come from. My mother is from Ecuador and my father's Ukrainian Jewish, born in the US, so he's already second-generation. I spent time growing up in Ecuador as a child and have been mining that experience for my work I recently.
Jose Luis Benavides with Nancy Sánchez, Amanda Cervantes and Daniel Haddad
Jose Luis Benavides sees the world primarily through his experience raised by a working-class, queer Latinx single mother in the Chicago community of Logan Square. The convergence of his own queer and intellectual identity mark conflicted point where his artistic practice is defined and undefined...
Amina Ross with J’Sun Howard, Khadijah Ksyia, Jared Brown and A.J. McClenon
An undisciplined creator. Amina Ross creates boundary-crossing works that embrace embodiment, imaging technologies, intimacy and collectivity in physical and digital spaces. Amina has exhibited work, spoken on panels and taught workshops at venues throughout the United States. Amina's intention w...
Joelle Mercedes and Hiba Ali
Joelle Mercedes (UN AFRODESCENDIENTE del Bronx, NYC) is a multimedia artist with a focus on collage, video, sound, performance, and molding. His work is committed to unpacking and reframing origins, through the exploration/manipulation of non-linear narrative, facades, environments, time, food, a...
Avery R. Young with Drew Coleman, Marcus Davis, Mekeba Malik and Javon J. Smith
Multidisciplinary artist and arts educator avery r. young is a Cave Canem alum & 3Arts Awardee whose work has appeared in The Golden Shovel Anthology, The BreakBeat Poets and other anthologies. He is on the executive team of The Floating Museum. Along with mentoring Rebirth Poetry Ensemble, he pe...
Using the 2016 film Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins), avery r. young curates an evening of poetry & dance that explores blk queerness, migration and intimacy.
El Cardenal De Aztlán
Performance artist, photographer, Sports journalist, radio host of SCREAMS OF COMBAT. 2010 Propeller Fund Grant Awardee (Andy Warhol Foundation, Threewalls, Gallery 400 UIC). Founder of TSC Collective (@TSCCo) and Tamale Spaceship, a food truck and “long-term performance art project addressing ...
AZTLAN GOAL LINE is a radio and performance art project by El Cardenal de Aztlan inspired by the text Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria AnzaldĂşa.
Tarnynon (Ty-yuh-nuh) Onumonu with collaborators Tarynn Jackson and Kayla McClain
Tarnynon (Ty-yuh-nuh) Onumonu is a poet, performance artist and teaching artist who is practicing in the Southeast side Chicago Jeffrey Manor neighborhood where she is native. She was awarded second place in the 2017 Guild Complex Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards and represented Chicago as a memb...
In a ruminant fashion, Ty-yuh-nuh finds joy in and draws inspiration from her clients, formerly homeless members of Thresholds Organization.
Makeba Kedem-DuBose with collaborators Nataka Moore, Ennis Martin III, Renee Baker
Chicago native, Makeba Kedem-DuBose, has been a Multidisciplinary Career Artist for over 25 years, practicing throughout the greater Chicago land area, as well as regionally (New York, Atlanta, Maryland, Philadelphia, California, Michigan, Florida), and internationally (France, Germany, Ghana, En...
Najee Searcy & Jenna Anast with collaborators Zo//Ra and Melissa Alamndina
Najee Searcy
Najee is a local artist and musician concentrating on how we heal those who heal others. He organizes around the arts and youth engagement. Najee is presently involved with YolloCalli Arts Reach as an artist in residence at Barrett Park where he teaches the youth ages 13-24 apo...
Cat Mahari with Rae Chardonnay, Amir George, and Daniel Haywood
Cat Mahari creates work with personal and collective transformational possibilities. She is a free style hip hop and house dancer, with ongoing training in multiple modern techniques, ballet, Krump, Traditional West African, Cuban Salsa, and Chen taiji. In addition to movement performance, she is...
If you play and make a statement...and it's a valid statement, that's a truth right there in itself.
— John Coltrane
Imani Elizabeth Jackson & collaborator Jo Stewart
Jo Stewart is a movement-theater artist and poet. She uses a combination of gesture, verse, and improvisational scores to make work that meets notions of blackness with queered mythologies. She has previously been an artist in residence at the Anderson Center at Tower View (2018), Atlantic Center...
Ain’t Got No / I Got Life is an exercise in waiting inspired by Nina Simone's song with the same name.
Maya Mackrandilal with collaborators Enid Muñoz, Bhanu Kapil and Udita Upadhyaya
Maya Mackrandilal is a transdisciplinary artist, writer, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles. Her artwork, shown recently in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, imagines radical futures for women of color solidarity and liberation. Her writing, which has appeared in a variety of publicati...
AJ McClenon with Angel Bat Dawid
AJ was born and raised in "D.C. proper," and is currently based in Chicago using performance practices, sound, video, movement, theatre and writing to share experiences living in a Black body. AJ holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received a Bachelor ...
What are the consequences of a citizen's performance as superhuman while being classified as subhuman by the world at large?
The Chicago Tiller
Pansy is an artist collaborative between River Kerstetter & discojihad
Let's talk about healing, queerness, and ancestors.
Minh Nguyen and Jacobo Zambrano
Minh Nguyen is a writer and organizer of exhibitions and programs currently living in Chicago, IL, by way of Saigon, Vietnam. She graduated from University of Washington with a Bachelor's degree in Literature and is attending School of the Art Institute for a Master's degree in Modern and Contemp...
Sabba Elahi with Ahalya Satkunaratnam & Mohamed Mehdi
Sabba S. Elahi (pictured above) is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, educator, and cultural organizer. Through her artwork she subverts textile and the craft of embroidery to confront representations of dehumanized Muslim bodies, militarism, belonging/nationalism, and personal/collective/inheri...
Threewalls is always finding new ways to share our artist’s unique voices through exhibits, talks, and gatherings. We would like you to be the first to know about these opportunities.
