devynn emory
He // Him // His, They // Them // Theirs
[ID: A sun-skinned, mixy transmasculine person rests against a tree with a ball cap on looking directly into the camera. They have scraggly chin beard, gold septum piercing, and they wear a denim gray button-down shirt.]
Portrait photo courtesy of the artist.
Brooklyn, NY
2023 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
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devynn emory is a choreographer/dance artist; dual-licensed bodyworker; a holder of collaborative spaces gesturing to collective ritual; a medium; educator; and registered nurse practicing in the fields of acute/critical care, hospice, COVID-19 and integrative health in Lenapehoking (NYC). emory’s performance company, devynnemory/beastproductions, finds the intersection of these fields, walking the edges of thresholds — drawing from their multiple in-between states of being. They hold space for liminal bodies bridging multiple planes of transition while finding reciprocity practice as a constant decolonial practice. they are currently working on a trilogy centering medical mannequins holding the wisdom of end-of-life experiences and weaving stories from patients and elders, inviting audiences into grief and somatic practice in collaboration with land. The trilogy is composed of part 1: deadbird (film) and can anybody help me hold this body (grief altar + global archive), part 2: Grandmother Cindy (live performance + film) and Cindy Sessions: LOVE, LOSS, LAND (three films), and part 3 in process: boiling-rain. They have also run a private practice since 2002 named sage that holds a variety of practices and teachings. Born on Lenape Land, emory is of mixed settler/European ancestry on their matrilineal side and is a Lenape/Blackfoot descendent on their patrilineal side.
A still from the filming of Cindy Sessions: LAND, 2022. Photo by Reilly Horan.[ID: A backlit figure stands in the middle distance against a desert landscape. They stand in profile with their knees slightly bent and their arm bent upward at the elbow. Above them is a vast and crisp blue sky.]
Still from Part 2 of the #mymannykinfriends trilogy. Image from the rehearsal of “Grandmother Cindy.” Photo still by Jorge Cousineau.[ID: Two performers in blue medical scrubs hang an IV bag. In front of them, a medical mannequin lays on a red table covered in a red sheet. In the background of the set is a projection of a woman's face and two statue-like figures draped in yellow.]