Maison Chaos

Show & Culture

In this performance, in dialogue with musician Sara Machine, Joëlle Sambi – a writer, spoken-word artist and Afrofeminist – commands the stage with magnetic intensity. Armed with her incisive writing, she addresses a long letter to “an old friend, a dear sister” – an intimate account that runs from childhood to the shattering violence of a rape. Her words surge forward with unflinching precision, never slipping into voyeurism, balancing restraint with the urgent need to speak of what violence does to both body and identity. Saved by writing, Joëlle Sambi dismantles the injunction to be resilient and upends our image of the victim. Speaking to destroy, speaking to rebuild…