Marguerite Angelica Monique Hemmings is a Jamaican born, Jersey-raised, NYC-made performance artist, writer, and social practitioner currently based in Philadelphia, USA. They focus on one’s own body, one’s own way of moving, adapting, healing, releasing, protecting, changing, and connecting to the unseen. They are a master of body ceremonies and a curator of vibes.
Marguerite uses body, text, media, and moving images in their work. They specialize in emergent, improvisational and social movement styles and technologies, rooted in the biomythography of the African Diaspora. They are researching the ancestral and subversive role of the dance/dancer/trickster throughout the African Diaspora and look to conjure these technologies through all of their (present) work.
Hemmings’ work is also embedded in alternative pedagogy and social practice/research. They have been subverting, working, and creating with youth as a teaching artist for over 15 years with programs such as The Possibility Project, University Settlement, and a co-founded initiative for the youth called New York Youth Movement Collaborative. They are an Associate Adjunct Professor at University of the Arts. They have received grants, fellowships, and commissions from the Jerome Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, Harlem Stage, University Settlement, Dancing While Black, Urban Bush Women’s Choreographic Center Initiative, Arizona State University’s Projecting All Voices Fellowship, Abrons Arts Center, Headlong Performance Institute, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and Mural Arts. They’ve received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer in Eva Yaa Asantewaa’s Skeleton Architecture. They currently work inside of a self/spirit directed practice called we free. we free looks at the millennial and gen z approach to liberation through its music, social dance and social media, as well as lives in a speculative world where freedom has already been secured a long, long time ago.