Truth & Punishment — an installation & performance by Kama La Mackerel
Galerie La Centrale Powerhouse, Montreal QC
Performance: Sept 21, 2018
The Ethical Etherrealness of Love and Fuck, curated by Lindsay Nixon: Exhibition dates Sept 21 – Oct 19, 2018
“This shit was over before it started. Everybody needs someone to make them feel superior. That line ends us with us [trans women] though. This shit runs downhill past the women, the Blacks, the latins, gays, until it reaches the bottom and lands on our kind.” – Lulu Abondance (played by Hailie Sahar), Pose, Season 1 Episode 2.
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” — Audre Lorde
In this performance, Kama La Mackerel explores the trope of the “crazy Black trans woman” as a continued state of being that exists between truth & punishment. Juxtaposing instances of freedom (as in “being your true self”) with punishment (as in “being punished for being your true self”), the artist addresses trans misogynist violence as it is condoned in all spheres of society, particularly amongst the progressive left: the queer community, the social justice warriors & the feminists.
there is no P in this TSD.
there is no P in this TSD.
there is no P in this TSD.
Interweaving poetry, storytelling, repetition & body movement, the artist recreates and holds the constant state of craziness that trans feminine lives are forced to inhabit. The performance exhibits the mechanisms and structures of punishment that uphold this state, and the artist demands that the audience interrogate themselves about their own positions in upholding the boundaries of this state.
look in the mirror!
look in the mirror!
look in the mirror!
As an installation, “Truth & Punishment” is an interactive piece that is a “call into engagement”— a call to justice, a call to reckon with the self with truthfulness & honesty. This text-based femme armour asks the audience to look through a mirror to be able to decipher the text the manuscript. In the process, the audience cannot but have to look at at themselves in the mirror— a process of reckoning with the voice of a Black trans woman that asks them to look at themselves truthfully & honestly.