The Department of Contemporary Dance Presents: Kama La Mackerel - Artist Talk

In this artist talk, artist-in-residence Kama La Mackerel reflects on their artistic practice over the past decade—spanning performance, poetry, photography, moving image, textiles and literary translation—to offer insights into the theoretical frameworks that ground their aesthetics and politics.

An intimate exploration of process, this talk delves into the key questions that shape Kama’s decolonial and trans poetics: How does a racialized, transgender body engage in acts of creation that contend with colonial histories while imagining radical futures? What strategies of selfhood and artistic innovation can be deployed to create new sites of collaboration, rupture, and belonging? How can interdisciplinary creation function as an anticolonial praxis?

Through an in-depth look at past works and ongoing projects, this talk offers a window into the artist’s creative process—moving fluidly between spiritual, embodied, and poetic offerings to illuminate the possibilities of hybrid creation.