Kalai A

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Explorations will engage in dialogues with individuals who practice expansive queerness, creatively documenting the diverse ways in which queer trans people live and express themselves. Kalai A is the Coordinator for this project. 

Kalai A is an artist working through the lens of transness, neurodivergence and queering time. They have a private practice as a queer affirmative, trauma informed mental health practitioner. Kalai’s creative practice involves creating queer-trans affirmative, neurodivergence friendly, anti-caste spaces for people. As an artist, they were trained in Carnatic Music, and they were the lead vocalist with the band Joint by the Sea. Their practice is informed by their search for community, belonging and finding feral ways of being, in the search for models of generative masculinities to embody and learn from the stories of gender joy. Given their experience, Kalai A is best placed to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

This project titled Tales of Gender Fuckery: Mapping Joys of Transgressions will engage in dialogues with individuals who practise expansive queerness, documenting the diverse ways in which queer trans people live and express themselves. The Project Coordinator along with their artistic collaborators will explore the transformative power of gender fuckery through the creative practice of creating as resistance to the cis hetero brahmanical patriarchy.

The outcome of the project will be a creative documentation of trans, gender expansive expressions, and lives from a trans and neurodiverse lens. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA with the final report will be a website archiving responses from six to eight people, exploring the themes of gender joy, community building, and neurodivergence.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it mobilises participatory art to forge an emancipatory space for individuals who practise expansive queerness, through creative resistance to the cis hetero brahmanical patriarchy.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm by convening an online gathering of artists coordinating Explorations projects. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.