Marooning Bodies at Feminist Center for Creative Work

A marooning body is about leaning into incompleteness to find power. Philosopher Dr. Bayo Akomolafe describes it as questioning “how brokenness can redeem us from the incarceration of wholeness.” After their self-liberation from captivity, maroon communities turned to remote landscapes—from the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina and Virginia to the jungles of the Guianas—for temporary or permanent freedom. Since maroon communities were formed by people from various parts of Africa, there was no previously shared culture to tether to in these new civilizations. As a result, they had to adapt to the environment but also to various languages, governing styles, and social values. Through cultural exchange, the communities unified with agreed-upon leadership styles. For example, a common trend in maroon communities was the Kuutu, a routine meeting where leaders and community members debated issues, both big and small. Maroon communities were built through a unified understanding that adaptation was a shared effort.²

Mims and Mười, Marooning Bodies: Prototype as Prophecy (installation view) (2026). Image courtesy of the artists and Feminist Center for Creative Work (FCCW). Photo: Evelyn Hang Yin.

As the FCCW’s artist-in-residence for last spring, Mimsl exhibition (presented with collaborator Mười) challenged us to imagine similar worlds that might operate outside of oppressive systems. At the core of the presentation was an immersive Marooning Bodies game, designed by Mims to build a fictional community by collectively imagining a future centered on equitable governance, healing, and creation. Packed into a cylindrical wooden container that Mims describes as a “time capsule for the future,”³ the game includes a guidebook, a small bottle filled with a scent to inspire the group’s speculative environment, and card decks that describe the community practices of animals for inspiration. Throughout the run of the show, the artists hosted two free 3-hour game sessions where groups of up to six people delved into the process of building a shared community, using the guidebook to prompt discussions around creating communal systems and a reflection on the socio-political issues participants are facing today. Players were asked to reflect on personal memories—like how they learned from mistakes as a child—before digging into larger questions, like the type of biome they’d like to inhabit or the way they’ll resolve issues within their community.

For Mims, Marooning Bodies extended her practice of creating interactive pieces that are embodied by viewers, often while taking part in conversations around oppressive systems like the prison industrial complex. “How do we extricate ourselves from any systems that are oppressing us, and how do we do so with our whole bodies?” Mims said during our conversation over the phone. Based in L.A., Mims and Mười first collaborated while attending the University of Southern California. #jailbeddrop was the artists’ first collaboration, an immersive performance that prompted community discussions and interaction. When Mims began developing the Marooning Bodies game in 2020, she felt compelled to return to and explore #jailbeddrop’s blend of performance, installation, and community facilitation.⁴

The exhibition was split into three sections: an archive of the game’s development (where gameplay tools like dice and stopwatches were displayed alongside the artist’s research) led into a section of written notes gathered from previous game sessions. Composed on loose slips of paper, the handwritten notes shared past participants’ approaches to conflict resolution within their imagined communities and revealed ideas shared by participants who have played the game in Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, as well as USC, CSU East Bay, the Women and Dance Leadership Conference in Los Angeles, and Norco Prison. Third, a collection of what Mims refers to as “Future Relics”—works of art inspired by the futures imagined by groups who have played the game— hung from the ceiling and rested atop pedestals throughout the gallery.

Mims and Mười, Marooning Bodies: Prototype as Prophecy (installation view) (2026). Image courtesy of the artists and Feminist Center for Creative Work (FCCW). Photo: Evelyn Hang Yin.

Chain Gang in Blue: The Bower Dress (2026), for instance, was a dress designed by Phlemuns, a Black-owned fashion label based in L.A., made of uniforms from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Denim and lace ribbons flow from the body of the dress—rather than disposing of the past, this dress imagines it as an opportunity for creation and beauty. Against an opposite wall, a model for a Collective Prayer Stool (to be completed by artist Kia McCormick and used in a performance by Mims after the exhibition’s conclusion) offered a structure that might encourage the types of conversation that the game fosters—a space where people might pray and dream together.

“I look at these art objects as tools for rehearsal,” Mims told me. “How do we rehearse some of the future histories that we’re dreaming up, the future communities and the future systems we want to have?” Marooning Bodies isn’t a final product. It is an evolving open studio that lives on beyond the exhibition’s closing. Like the game, the work isn’t meant to be witnessed and forgotten—it is meant to be rehearsed. A marooning body may be emergent, but by finding empathy to grow alongside other people’s fragments, together creating a whole, the body becomes part of a community—the puzzle is complete.

Mims and Mười, Marooning Bodies: Prototype as Prophecy (installation view) (2026). Image courtesy of the artists and Feminist Center for Creative Work (FCCW). Photo: Evelyn Hang Yin.