Kama La Mackerel is a performance poet, storyteller and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores performative and poetic practices as resilience, resistance and healing for marginalized communities. Her artistic practice spans across textile, visual, digital, poetic and performative work; at once narratological and theoretical, at once personal and political, her work articulates an anti-colonial praxis through cultural production.
Her projects are community-informed and community-driven: she is an artist mentor with the Artists Mentoring Youth (AMY) Project, as well as the Artistic Director of AMY’s Performance Poetry Program for Trans Women and Femmes. She is the creator and Artistic Director of GENDER B(L)ENDER, The Self-Love Cabaret, Contemporary Poetics of Trans Women of Colour Artists, and Our Bodies, Our Stories: a creation & performance mentorship program for QTBIPOC youth. Kama has performed locally and internationally at venues in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver, Burlington, New York City, London, Amsterdam, Paris and beyond. Kama was born and raised in Mauritius, immigrated to India as a young adult, and then immigrated to Canada in 2008. She she has been living in tio’tia:ke (Montreal) since 2011.
Image: Pascha Marrow