lichen bouboushian

We are thrilled to announce the 2026 featured artists of ARCOS Presents! Be sure to follow us here and sign up for our newsletter for updates on their creative process. Their projects will present  9/4–12 at Crashbox. 𝗥𝘂𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: 𝗦𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗸 Lichen Bouboushian •  @query.or.lament 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗦ā𝗹 by Venese Alcantar and Omar Mousa • @v.morology @omarmousapicture • @salsalproject 𝗥𝘂𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: 𝗦𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗸 shares stories across three generations: my grandfather’s childhood in occupied Armenia after the genocide, my father’s forced migration to the US due to the Lebanese civil war, and my life as a first-generation american. Through embodied explorations of compression, I posit our socially “small” positioning (our less “valuable” social role as victims of empire) as a tool for navigating oppressive structures. I build an unstable nest in the set, a pile evocative of a bombed-out building in Beirut, and slowly unravel it to glean what it may offer me; it acts as both my home and obstacle.  𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗦ā𝗹- clay that makes sound- is a surrealist dance-for-cinema that emphasizes the body as the site for change. In this process, we are inviting volatility through rupture and repair, slippage, and coming to shape as counterpractices to the heartwrenching silence (represented by the American LawnTM/sod) and immobilization against the ongoing genocide, abduction, and violence of folx living at the access of difference. We ponder what it means to be a criminalized body by default through the rejection of prescribed American normalcy. What does it mean to be an ungovernable body? How are we refuting erasure through our artistic stance? SalSāl is a contemplation on the body in protest as well as a celebration of our collective resiliency. We hold the core understanding that we all come from the clay; we are relatives. Just as a body would not ignore a hurt limb, a society shouldn’t ignore immense suffering and must move towards change. 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘿 𝘼𝙍𝙏𝙄𝙎𝙏 𝘽𝙄𝙊𝙎 𝙊𝙉 𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝙒𝙀𝘽𝙎𝙄𝙏𝙀 [image ID] in captions and in alt text for still images

Happy to be here amongst the lilacs and happy to share this with you. While Chicago will always be one of my satellite homes, I needed to finally move to the woods to make my life‘s work. I don’t know if I will get to share this specific piece, “Rupture: Sneak,” again in this beloved place, so please try and make it tomorrow if you can! This work in progress of a piece that will premiere in Austin in September has been years in the making, and tackles intergenerational stories in my family history from Armenia to Lebanon to the US. And other really amazing artists are also on the bill! @hoolinz @erikaordos @wannapapeubanks @hairpinartscenter @savethenightchicago

Wannapa Pimtong-Eubanks is a *Butoh Artist, choreographer, movement coach, Improviser, and actor. A Thai native, hwork often stems from a personal experience or a specific memory that grows into a poetic image that she imbues with the memory of the moment. In 2011, She was selected the for Dance/USA showcase at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. From 2010-2021, She was an Artistic member of Erasing the Distance, a non-profit arts organization based in Chicago that uses the power of performance to disarm stigma, spark dialogue, educate, and promote healing surrounding issues of mental health. Since then, she has been passionately focusing on exploring the relationship between our mental condition and movement. Her upcoming event : Tending to The M[other] by Christine Shallenberg and Aurora Tabar will be shared as part of Synapse Arts residency, on June 25 and 27. Her work for this evening, The Unknown, emotionally reflects on both her mother’s view and her own view as she has been entering into the Dementia stage. She would love to dedicate this Butoh piece to her dear 84 yrs-old mother who has been living strong throughout her life as a dedicated wife, mother, and grandmother. Come see @wannapapeubanks alongside @hoolinz @erikaordos and myself at @hairpinartscenter this Friday May 8 co sponsored by @savethenightchicago

Harlan Rosen moves floorward, awkward, wayward ... Reveling in the tension between flamboyance and secrecy, routine and hysteria, their body haunts lineages of butoh, salsa, and contemporary dance. They have presented original performance work in venues throughout Chicago both extant and extinct, and have appeared in ensemble works by Carole McCurdy, Ginger Krebs, Mitsu Salmon, Iván-Daniel Espinosa, Helen Lee, and Christopher Knowlton, in addition to being a regular guest at improvised performance series including Cristal Sabbagh’s Freedom From And Freedom To and Sharkey Zalek’s Hot Mess. Come see Harlan and our other amazing artists next Friday May 8 at Hairpin Arts!

Introducing our performance artists for Plumbing the Depths: An Evening of Performance Art @hairpinartscenter - Érika Ordosgoitti (Caracas, 1980) is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and educator based in Chicago. With a career spanning over 25 years, her work has evolved from public space interventions via “fotoasaltos” to an in-depth investigation into immigration in the United States, testimonial archiving, and the politics of language. Her current practice focuses on creating living archives and diaspora narratives, exploring how words and memory function as territories of resistance. Her work recognizes the body and the voice as the primary spaces of contention against the mechanisms of power. Her project for this performance is a sound exploration centered on cruelty, with an interactive component, touching on themes of immigration and war. Come see what @erikaordos @hoolinz @wannapapeubanks and I cook up Friday May 8 7:30pm sharp. Masks required, ADA accessible, content warnings forthcoming. $10 via Venmo (etc) or cash at the door. Presented in partnership with @savethenightchicago

Art of depth matters in these times. Art by queer and trans folks, art by immigrants, art by those whose lives or family members’ lives are under siege, matters in this moment. Art that is accessible and safe for chronically ill folks, and those with disabilities, matters too. Won’t you join us? For…Plumbing the Depths: An Evening of Performance Art Friday May 8, 7:30-9:30pm at Hairpin Arts in Logan Square Four artists whose work spans dance, poetry, Butoh, drag, theater, and experimental sound explore selfhood through the depth and breadth of the solo form. Featuring Lichen Bouboushian, Érika Ordos, Wannapa Pimtong Eubanks, and Harlan Rosen.

Thank you to @whatisglampglamp for helping me resurrect The Barleson Banks Twisted Tea Advice Hour! Imagine: a real-life version of @littlebubbychild meets metaphysical musings and a big ego – but an even bigger heart! Barleson seems like your run-of-the-mill country bubba bro, but he’s an esoteric softie with sexuality questions, in addition to having an ex-wife, no job, and an addiction to drinking Twisted Teas late into the night. Come along for the ride with Barleson, and explore questions like: -What am I doing? -Why am I doing it? -Can I ever escape the confines of my birth chart, even if (or especially because) I’m gay? -What happens when the TT’s run out? And more!...all in an interactive performance weaving comedy and tragedy. On a sincere note – when I think country, I think of where I grew up, ye olde Corsicana, Texas. I think of all the characters I knew growing up, and their weird charm. Consider this a queering and a mashup of all those broke white guys in trailers who usually fall into despair-induced Q-Anon pits. Luckily for Barleson, he found existentialism before the internet got him! Much thanks also to @ashwolff.art for letting BB try his hand at energy reading/healing, and all the sweet friends and supporters of a gay-ish persuasion, new and old alike. Thanks again to @thee.gay.agenda for giving me a platform to dream up this character, too.

In recent years, I’ve been nearly unable to share with friends that I had very little, mostly estranged known family left in Beirut. Even when the pager attacks and carpet bombings happened in 2024, and friends were texting to check in, I didn’t know how to explain that they had “gone back” to Armenia, but against their will. As those attacks were happening, I was at an artist residency near where Hurricane Helene touched down. Late capitalist societal and climate collapse were impacting my neighbors and my estranged family in such wildly different yet interconnected ways, right as I was deepening my research on my grandfather’s life as a child in Armenia. I knew I had to find new ways to reinvigorate and share these stories through my body and voice. And in this moment of fabricated, escalating destruction of my father’s home country under the guise of ‘war,’ I am even more committed to sharing these stories. UnReTrace - presented by @in_ter_comm - moves through my paternal family’s multiple forced migrations from their indigenous home of Cilicia (traditional Armenian lands, now Turkey), to Beirut, Lebanon, to the U.S., and to Yerevan (capital of present-day Armenia). In it, I recite the timeline of my family’s ongoing expatriations, heaving cinder blocks - a commonplace material in the construction of temporary homes for refugees and war survivors - in a circle around the stage, on a seemingly endless journey to nowhere. Through this repetitive action, I embody the burdens of my family’s migration history as I share their stories. My voice, movement, and interaction with the blocks cohere to become a nexus for the unraveling of our complex struggles. I stack the blocks, climb them, and balance atop them. The accumulated efforts of these actions, along with a continual return to my recitation and circular trudging, echo my family’s struggles, as the blocks echo the detritus of war and migration. The work builds toward a clarion call, insisting that solidarity with Palestinians, as fellow survivors of displacement in the region, is central to our ability to thrive.

One more time with feelings 🥹🤪🤓😩😭🤬 check out the LEGS EP! A perfect way to embody rage and twinky obnoxiousness. Thank you @oopsallcentipedes for having us at Archer way back - enjoy these vids as if they happened yesterday. Speaking of way back, if you’re a CD heau, you’re in luck! See the link in my your know what for where to snatch those. Peace and blessings; you will never hear from me about this album again (unless you’re on my mailing list) but you COULD hear the songs as many times as you want, forever, in just a few clickety clacks. Xoxoxo

Here’s a lil ol sad country breakup song from Claire’s Lobotomy, especially for the millennials, to close out the year. Enjoy your Saturn in Sagittarius, because no one in our generation can escape it anyway! And once again, apologies for the dumb flag, and please look at the MAROON MARAUD DEFRAUD shirt instead. We are honored to be included in the 2nd Mandatory Liberation compilation by NYC labels Gold Bolus and Strategy of Tension. This one benefits GLITS, a Black trans led organization that combats systemic oppression. Please help them do the good work by buying this album! LANK IS IN MY BI BI!! Last year after our show with @olula_negre @drapetomaniak_ & @sirlyra - I wrote some heartfelt words about the deeper meaning behind our music making, inspired by the community cultivated that evening. Enjoy my musings as well! Our music is about activating a new felt experience that expands upon an under the surface feeling, and brings us back into it with a sense of wonder and play, when the original experience may have made us feel clamped, shut down, or restricted…like those compacted sedimentary layers of holding and moving through showing up for work when our tax dollars fund extractive erasures. So, this music springs from wondering how, sonically and performatively, we might use simple song structures, improvisation that gives latitude yet reaches for specificity, working together/parallel to/sometimes against each other, to separate out those layers, look inside, and unravel what they’ve done to us. What emerges in the yelps, fits and starts, growls, hums, and cries of lament is our resistance to and processing of the dark world we inherit. This is how we do the work of transformation. We tunnel and dwell in the dark places to forge something new: a resonant, ethereal world of sound, shape, and color that plumbs the depths of our everyday lives, and simultaneously transforms them into a surprising world that is at turns playful, comical, difficult and strange. … that’s Claire‘s Lobotomy for ya!

Did you miss LEGS? Do you need a little bit of freaky effed up NOISE ROCK in your life? Do you want to hear me sing about really bad social realities and also be a cheeky little f*g sometimes? WELP, YR IN LUCK KITTENZ!! The wondrous @goodwillsmith released our album, UPSET ABOUT STUFF, via Blorpus Editions! Hear the massive shreddery of @_warehousegirl_ and the insane rhythmic insights of @couches alongside my vocal bellows and squeals, with original sad and angry boi poetry also by yrs truly. Link in bio to listen on Bandcamp or BUY A 💿!! Thanks also to @saintbelligerent for the HOTT album art. Now get out there and headbang til everything falls off your shelves!! Pretty sure these incredible photos were taken by @morir_contigo at the Seven Minutes in Hell Fest at NotNot. See you in the pit…OF DESPAIR!

Earlier this year, I gave up on my art. This was in part because I felt like I could no longer deal with the art world. It was really more about not being able to deal with the echo chamber in my mind about the art world. It had nothing to do with my higher purpose. It had nothing to do with the artists I love and deeply respect, who have saved me and helped me survive a million times. It was in part about being lost and confused, and knowing I needed to focus on my physiological health and hold strong to a deeper spiritual commitment. But now I see that all of those things are intertwined. And so, I will be sharing something special this Thursday; my first New York showing of original work since 2019. I gathered up some of my favorite artists, whose intensities all hit on different registers. Come see what we have to offer. Alchemy, catharsis, and maybe even a little healing are all possible. I refuse to believe this isn’t important now. Also, if you have any connections to free sources for KN95 masks lmk; mine have still not arrived by mail 😒