Simone Reynolds (she/they) is a Black queer interdisciplinary artist, community arts educator, and medicine maker from the Southside of Chicago, by way of the Afrofuture. They stem from the artistic lineages of the Black churchy Hoodoo, the Chicago diaspora, and the creative technologies of their ancestors from southern swamps and Trans-Atlantic seas. Simone conjures the unveiling of the magic in the mundane through the transportive mediums of music/sound, performance, film, creative writing, and visual art to address themes of race, gender, sexuality, class, diasporic cultural specificities, beauty politics, spirituality, and disability. She addresses these themes through the retelling of personal, familial, and communal stories that are often disregarded in a way that is inviting, alluring, medicinal, dignifying, and liberating. Their work brings a mirror to the most marginalized—regarding the complex beauties and infinite everyday life of possibilities in an anti-Black world. As the founding steward of AfroFlare Salon: A Pathway to Beauty Fugitivity, her work is an altar that honors Black people of marginalized genders who desire to embrace themselves and their careways wholly as beautiful. She holds a BA in theatre arts and women, gender, and sexuality studies, while also being a scholar who has studied and trained with the Black Arts Institute (Billie Holiday Theatre), Artist as Citizen (The Juilliard School), and the New Art School Modality. Simone’s performance credits include Rewriting the Declaration, for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, In the Next Room, 9 to 5: The Musical, Silver Room Block Party, Lollapalooza 2020, and the Black Cube Museum.