Hope Esser (she/her, b. 1984, New York, NY) is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist working in performance, garment, sculpture, and video. She earned her BA in Studio Art and Art History cum laude from Oberlin College (2007) and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2012), where she was awarded the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship and the James Nelson Raymond Fellowship.
She has been an artist-in-residence at Triangle Arts Association, ACRE, Hatch Projects, the Watermill Center, and Ox-Bow, where she was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Scholarship. She has performed, screened, and exhibited at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indianapolis, IN), the Watermill Center (Long Island, NY), Gallery 400 (Chicago, IL), Roots and Culture (Chicago, IL), Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn, NY), Links Hall (Chicago, IL), the Arts Club of Chicago (Chicago, IL), ExGirlfriend (Berlin, Germany), and La Esquina Gallery (Kansas City, MO), among others.
Esser is an Assiociate Professor, Adj. in the Contemporary Practices and Performance Departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was awarded an SAIC Faculty Enrichment Grant in 2016 and 2018.