Raised in North Carolina and Virginia, Melika Bass is an artist and filmmaker based in Chicago. Inspired by both Southern and Midwestern gothic sensibilities, in which she weaves narratives of stillness within her atmospheric experimental films. As dreamy, episodic tales infused with impressionistic moments, her works intentionally challenge storytelling conventions. Bass defines her archetypal characters primarily by their wooden yet authentic human gestures, rendered strange and hyper-real when treated with theatrical lighting and visceral sound design. Haunting and resonant, Bass’s films revolve around the sacrament of the everyday in a landscape of detritus.

Melika Bass holds an MFA in Film, Video, and New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in English Literature from Earlham College. She is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Kodak/Filmcraft Imaging Award for Best Cinematography at the Ann Arbor Film Festival for her film Songs from the Shed (2008); artist residencies at the Roger Brown House (2011), Wexner Center for the Arts (2009), and Ox-Bow School of the Arts (2009); the Artadia Award (2008); and a Media Arts Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council (2008). Her work has been exhibited in cinemas, festivals, and art spaces worldwide, among them the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (solo exhibition, February 2011); the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Hamburg International Short Film Festival, Germany; Split Festival of New Film, Croatia; Almada International Dance Festival, Cinema Showcase, Portugal; Festival de la Cultura Iberoamericana, Cuba; Galleria FAFA, Helsinki, Finland; Egilsstaðir Experimental Film & Video Festival, Iceland; Anthology Film Archives, New York; ATA Film & Video Festival, San Francisco, CA; Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, CA; Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, MI; the Chicago Underground Film Festival and the Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, IL. Bass lives and works in Chicago, where she teaches in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is completing her first feature film, Shoals, a prairie grotesque set on an old Wisconsin dairy farm.