In this work, La Mackerel excavates the roots that have accompanied Black diasporas across the globe—literally, as the food we eat; spiritually, in the ways we live, resist and thrive. Presented as a durational piece within an installation, this performance invites the audience to engage with the work exhibited in their own time, in non-linear ways, where traces of the performance remain embodied in the space, beyond the presence/absence of the performer’s physicality.

Named after the god of love, Kama La Mackerel is a multilingual writer, visual artist, performer, translator and educator who believes in love, transformation and justice. Their work ventures beyond the borders of disciplinarity and creates hybrid spaces from which to enunciate decolonial and queer vocabularies. Wholeheartedly invested in ocean narratives, island sovereignty, transgender poetics and ancestral healing, their body of work challenges colonial notions of time and space as these relate to history, power, language, subject formation and the body.

lamackerel.net // @KamaLaMackerel

Brown Butter is generously supported by the Canada Council of the Arts and the David Bain Memorial Fund, Queen’s University.