Erica R. Mott

Erica Mott is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and movement practitioner working across performance, installation, participatory art, technology, and public practice. Her work has been presented throughout North America, Latin America, and Europe. She describes performance in the public sphere as the creation of “sites of convergence,” where bodies, histories, environments, and communities encounter one another. Her practice centers relationship building, embodied research, collaboration, and social transformation. As an educator, she approaches the classroom as both studio and laboratory, encouraging experimentation, critical inquiry, and creative risk-taking.

Mott, Erica. 3Arts Award; Mott, Erica. DCASE-funded artist, City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events; Mott, Erica. Artist in residence, Bates Dance Festival; Mott, Erica. MacArthur Foundation Artist Travel Grant; Mott, Erica. U.S. Embassy Cultural Production Grant, Cairo, Egypt; Mott, Erica. Night Out in the Parks Artist Grant, Chicago Park District.

Toenjes, John, Ken Beck, M. Anthony Reimer, and Erica Mott. “Dancing with Mobile Devices: The LAIT Application System in Performance and Educational Settings.” Journal of Dance Education 16, no. 3 (2016): 81–89; Ingebritsen, Ryan, Christopher Knowlton, Hugh Sato, and Erica Mott. “Social Movements: A Case Study in Dramaturgically-Driven Sound Design for Contemporary Dance Performance to Mediate Human-Human Interaction.” In Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, 227–237. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2020. 

Exhibitions, Curations, and/or Collections: Mott, Erica. Artist in residence, National Museum of Health and Medicine, Chicago, IL; Mott, Erica. Opening exhibition, Cricoteka Museum, Kraków, Poland; Mott, Erica. Featured artist, Audio Art Festival, Kraków, Poland; Mott, Erica. Selected fellow, Ward 43 Chicago Year of Public Art, Chicago, IL; Mott, Erica. Featured artist with La Pocha Nostra, City of Women, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Mott, Erica. Featured artist with La Pocha Nostra, Queer Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia; Mott, Erica. Featured artist with La Pocha Nostra, steirischer herbst, Graz, Austria; Mott, Erica. Featured artist and instructor, Erasmus Scholars Program, Netherlands, Finland, and Serbia.

I am an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and movement practitioner whose work explores the body as a site of memory, perception, communication, and social transformation. Working across performance, installation, participatory art, technology, and public practice, I create experiences that invite audiences into new ways of sensing, relating, and moving through the world.

My artistic practice has been presented throughout North America, Latin America, and Europe. I describe performance in the public sphere as the creation of “sites of convergence”—places where bodies, histories, environments, and communities encounter one another in unexpected and transformative ways.

Central to my practice is relationship building: with collaborators, audiences, communities, sites, and the social conditions that shape artistic encounter. I view performance not as an isolated act of presentation, but as an evolving process of listening, trust, exchange, and shared inquiry.

As an educator, I view the classroom as both a studio and a laboratory—a space where experimentation, critical reflection, and creative risk-taking can coexist. My teaching emphasizes interdisciplinary inquiry, collaboration, and embodied awareness as a form of research.

Across both my creative and teaching practices, I am interested in how art can function as a catalyst for connection, curiosity, and transformation.