Cultural Studies Graduate Program | Trent University
Virtual Salon | September 23rd | 7:30PM

Speaker: Kama La Mackerel

https://www.eventbrite.ca/…/virtual-salon-2021-22…

Abstract: Since graduating from the Theory, Culture and Politics MA program at Trent University in 2011, Kama La Mackerel has gone on to establish themselves as a leading multidisciplinary artist and writer in Canada. In this talk, they look over their body of artistic work of the past decade, which spans from performance, poetry, photography, the moving image to digital art and literary translation, to offer a theoretical framework in which they ground their aesthetics and politics. At once a performance lecture and a studio visit, this talk will delve into the following questions: Is a decolonial enunciation possible at all in a racialized body that bears the weight of colonial history? What are the strategies of selfhood that a trans artist can deploy to catalyze new signs of identity and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation? How can hybrid spaces and interstices provide an anticolonial framework to disrupt fixed identifications as they relate to space, time, history, language, kinship and the body?

Bio: Kama La Mackerel is an award-winning Mauritian-Canadian multi-disciplinary artist, educator, writer, curator and literary translator who has exhibited, performed and lectured internationally. Their body of work includes photography, video, installation, performance, textile and literature. They are the author ZOM-FAM which was named a CBC Best Poetry Book, a Globe and Mail Best Debut, and was a finalist for the QWF Concordia University First Book Award and the Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize. World Literature Today called ZOM-FAM “a milestone in Mauritian literature.” Kama is presenting their new multimedia installation and performance QUEERING THE IS/LAND BODY at the 17th edition of MOMENTA, Biennale de l’image in Fall 2021.

Published by Shlomo Gleibman

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