Angel Shanel Edwards

Angel Shanel Edwards is a first-generation Jamaican and Philly-rooted artist. They utilize the creative modalities of movement, poetics, filmmaking, and photography to witness and re/member blackness as it moves through daily life, love, intimacy, and transitions [*gendered and otherwise]. angel is moved and led by the beautiful and messy cartographies of black life.

Angel studies across disciplines to sharpen their creative toolbox. angel has worked with Yolanda Wisher as a movement artist In Pirate Jenny’s Conspiracy, Arielle Julia Brown as a movement builder for ‘Fallawayinto’, and choreographed musicals at the University of the Arts and Princeton University. Their debut experimental performance film, THIS IS FOR US, has been screened at Black Femme Supremacy Film Festival, Toronto Queer Film Festival, and SF Tiny Dance Film Festival among others. They are Headlong Performance Institute Alumni. Vox Populi, the Center for Performance Research, The William Way Center, and Black Arts Matter Alberta have featured their choreographic and visual works. The Leeway Foundation, Small But Mighty Arts, Mural Arts Philly, Queer Art’s Eva Yaa Asantewaa Grant, and Jusdon Memorial Church’s Black Aesthetics have supported their creative works. In 2021, Angel was awarded a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Angel received their MFA in Dance at the University of the Arts in 2024. They are currently an Artist in Residence with The Arts League and a Leeway Foundation Media Arts Resident in Collaboration Black Spatial Relics.