The Trophallaxis Study Group
Featuring Researchers Marguerite Angelica Monique Hemmings, Winter Rae Schneider, & Jah Elyse Sayers
Curated by Jonathan González
Friday, November 4, 2022 – Sunday, December 18, 2022
Presented in Black Box, Gallery 1, and Gallery 2
About the Exhibition
To presuppose negation and become a thing amongst things, (+) and (-)1 simultaneously, The Trophallaxis Study Group assembles its participating researchers, Marguerite Angelica Monique Hemmings, jah elyse sayers, Winter Rae Schneider, and Jonathan González as curator, within the Vox galleries and Black Box spaces, and with the Vox community and visitors to engage in original works of printed matter, performance, film, sculpture, soundscapes and participatory engagements that animate the interstices of contemporary topics on the intra-mural, communal and inter-special.
About the Artists
Marguerite Angelica Monique Hemmings is a performance artist/educator currently based in Philadelphia, USA. They focus on one’s own body, one’s own way of moving, and connecting to the unseen. They are a master of body ceremonies and a curator of vibes. As a choreographer they specialize in emergent, improvisational and social dance movement styles and technologies, rooted in the story of the African Diaspora. They are researching the ancestral and subversive role of dance and the dancer throughout the African Diaspora and look to conjure these technologies through all of their (present) work. Marguerite uses body, text, media, and moving images in their work. They direct a multimedia endeavor called we free, which looks at the millennial and gen z approach to liberation through its music, social dance and social media. More info: wefreeee.com @margueriteangelicamonique
jah elyse sayers works toward spatial justice through research, writing, farming, building, teaching, organizing, and art-making at the intersections of environmental psychology, Black geographies, abolition geographies, urban studies, Black queer and trans studies, and embodiment. Their work draws on poetic, historical, and participatory methods to further struggles–especially Black queer and trans struggles–for liberatory placemaking against racial capitalism. Their writing has appeared in Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies and BRICLab Essays; they have performed at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX); and have exhibited sculptural work at MetaDen. They are currently a PhD candidate in environmental psychology. More info:@jahthecreature
Winter Rae Schneider is a futurist from the Delaware Valley. They follow a path of liberatory praxis at the crossroad of storytelling, power, radical love and accountability. They have been and they continue to be schooled in interdisciplinary freedom technologies, and they claim an intellectual lineage of scholars and artists reckoning with history and yearning for the next world. Rooted in West Philly, they spend their time mothering, and designing containers for historical reckoning and relational healing as co-founder of the worker-owned co-op, the Accountable History Network. They teach a critical analysis of power and facilitate thinking about structural and embodied legacies of dispossession and colonization. They practice coalitional organizing with the Philly Revenue Project, the Our City Our Schools coalition and the PILOTs (Payments in Lieu of Taxes) campaign. More info: @oilandwinter
About the Curator
Jonathan González is an artist, scholar and educator based in Philadelphia, PA. Their practice examines conditions that figure Black life at the intersections of insurgent aesthetics, political economy, metaphysics and performance studies through research-based processes in live art, pedagogy, and time-based media, usually generated collaboratively. Their writings have been published by Cultured Magazine, deem journal, EAR|WAVE|EVENT, among others. They have received support from Art Matters Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Their research has been supported by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Center for Afro-futurist Studies, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and Loghaven Artist Residency, among others. More info: gonzalezinfo.com @thirdlyrelevant
