Benji Hart

Benji Hart (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, an author, and an educator whose work centers Black radicalism, queer liberation, and prison abolition. Their work has appeared in anthologies including Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief (AK Press, 2017); And the Category Is…: Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community (Beacon Press, 2022); and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2022). Their work has been published in Time, Teen Vogue, TheAdvocate, The Funambulist, and elsewhere. They have led popular education and arts-based workshops for organizations internationally and presented at the American Repertory Theater, Northwestern University, the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and the National Museum of African American History & Culture.

Their solo performance Dancer as Insurgent, which examines voguing as a practice of Black queer resistance, was featured at the DuSable Black History Museum, Den Frie, CA2M, and the Museo Universitario del Chopo. Their current project, World After This One, explores how Black art forms imagine liberation through the materials of empire and has been shown at the Poetry Foundation, La Goyco, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and BRIC.

Hart has received support from Yaddo, the Amsterdam University of the Arts, MacDowell, and the Rauschenberg Foundation. They were a 2023 Lab Artist with Chicago Dancemakers Forum and a 3Arts awardee in the teaching arts. They grew up in Western Massachusetts and live and work in Chicago.