On the walls of the McClure gallery are enthroned large format photographs of Kama La Mackerel, absorbed, almost confused in the grandiose landscapes offered by Mauritius, her native island. “The commitment was just to be there, to trust. I was only there to be present”, recalls the multidisciplinary artist, who evokes a process of slow and contemplative staging of several hours until the fixation of the moment on glossy paper.
“This series of photos was very strong for me, because I had never had this kind of meditation relationship with the island”, specifies the one who was rocked during her childhood by this small island country of Indian Ocean.
For its multimedia exhibition Who Sings the Queer Island Body?, his first solo, Kama La Mackerel thus takes care of his island and, in fact, of all the others. “Islands, never recognized at their fair value and often historically exploited, nevertheless have a lot to teach us. My curiosity is there, when I dive into the fundamental, the spiritual, the relational”, indicates the artist. This action of taking care of which is dear to her has, in a precolonial context, also always raised trans people, she believes. “They were the ones who had the knowledge and who took care of the communities and the territory, who knew the medicine,” she points out. The notion of care is therefore at the center of my spirituality. “And to continue:” I always say that my trans identity is a spiritual call. »
It clicked when I started thinking about my childhood and the trans people I knew in Mauritius. Gender relations do not necessarily pass through the body, hence the spiritual part of my work today.
More so, liberation is spiritual. If Kama La Mackerel has long believed that her transidentity had to go through a hormonal transition, the important thing is actually to transcend the body. “It clicked when I started thinking about my childhood and the trans people I knew in Mauritius. Gender relations do not necessarily pass through the body, hence the spiritual part of my work today,” says the artist.
The palpable texture of queer
island body, Text/islands And Archipelagos of being, longing, belonging are two facilities of Who Sings the Queer Island Body? for which Kama La Mackerel notably used silk crepe, salt and paint to print his poetry, thought out in French, English and Creole. “There is a relationship to textiles linked to Mauritian femininity that I observed in my mother, my aunts and the women around whom I grew up. Textile is something fluid, very playfullwhich is now helping me reclaim the childhood that I didn’t necessarily have,” she says.
While the photography exercised by the artist in his work is much more spiritual, the contribution of textiles allows him to bring back a certain materiality within the exhibition. “It’s somewhere the most material practice I have, because when I work with textiles, I can touch, hold and design everything with my hands,” says the artist. In addition, the relationship between text and textile offers her writing, a process still at odds with her other creative practices according to her, the possibility of being embodied, of being born into the world.
As for the singular manipulation of salt in different works presented in Who Sings the Queer Island bodysuit?, it also makes it possible to express the materiality of the island. “Salt is the ocean, it’s sweat, it’s minerals, it’s everything that lives in us and in the territories”, says Kama La Mackerel, who adds that, in his vision , his ancestors, who have become salt, live in the body of Mauritius. “It’s interesting for me to work with paint on silk and salt, because I can play with the shapes and it gives textures and relief reminiscent of Google Earth. I like it,” she says.
Since it is an element that changes, salt can also be compared with queerness of the artist. “There is something in salt, like in transidentity, which is transformed, which changes, which can return to a previous summer. This fluidity, just like that of textiles, speaks to me,” notes Kama La Mackerel.
This narration of the island finally allows him to take time for spirituality in a rational world. Thanks to this particular approach, Kama La Mackerel avoids thinking about production when she creates. “I really stay in the process. What we see in the exhibition is only an impact. And it is at this moment that the artist manages, in beauty, to extract himself from colonial norms.