Ask about her in the right spaces and you will be met with enthused reactions. Opening her 2025 international performance calendar in grand fashion, Botswana-born cultural architect and performance artist, Kat Kai Kol-Kes is set to take on India in spectacular fashion in April. The multi-disciplinary practitioner joins the EASTgoesSOUTH residency for a week-long creative journey prior to embarking on a 4-part national tour of her own. Kol-Kes is an international award-winning creative whose work is driven by the desire to “create a world where ignorance is a choice, rather than the status quo”, and she has done so for over a decade using theatre, music, film, dance and more on local stages and across the world. From appearing off-Broadway to being a TED Fellow and receiving an honour as one of the 100 Most influential women of African descent from OkayAfrica, Kol-Kes’ mission to embody her signature #berekamosadi now returns her to India.
EASTgoesSOUTH brings together 14 cultural practitioners – 6 artists, 4 producer-curators and 4 witnesses – from three continents together for a week-long journey of creative rebirth. Travelling from Kochi in the south-western region to Kolkata in the north east – with day-long stops in Bangalore and Delhi – the cohort will be imagining and making together on India’s railways as they traverse the subcontinent from its south-western coast to the north east.
The residency is produced as an extension of East African Soul Train (E.A.S.T.) – .) – a creative adventure that started on East Africa’s historic railways in 2016 and looked to build connection and collaboration between artists working in different disciplines and from different areas of the world. The initiative is the real-time manifestation of a dream shared by co-founders Geraldine Hepp and Dr. Poppy Spowage. Working as artists and producers themselves, they wished to extend the reach and impact of financial and cultural resources of the global north to their peers of substantive merit in the global south in a decolonial practice while also building a bustling border-crossing network. “Our experience is that the trust built through the journey and methodologies that facilitate deep peer-to-peer learning, leads to collaborative relationships, cutting-edge practice and finding new ways of navigating and reshaping artistic realities beyond the project”, shares Dr. Spowage.
It is this very network, which Kol-Kes became the first Motswana member to, that offered space for the creation of works such as 2021’s video installation, “Making Lemonade”. In 2022, Kol-Kes formed part of a creative research trio alongside Indian movement artist, Diya Naidu and Ugandan visual artist, Pamela Enyonu funded by the Zurich branch of Pro Helvetia – The Swiss Arts Council, tasked with interrogating the collective’s pedagogical outlook across Switzerland. This resulted in Kol-Kes co-curating the multi-continental ‘Lost + Found’ hybrid residency in 2023 featuring artists from Switzerland, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria, England, India, Germany, Sudan, France, and Iran. This residency resulted in the collective’s first imprint in Botswana through the “Long Way Home” multi-genre, multi-medium, hybrid production that had artists beaming in from various points on the globe.
Naidu takes the helm as the director of EASTgoesSOUTH 2025, working alongside Kolkata-based performer, curator, and arts manager, Paramita Saha. During the residency, Kol-Kes will be reunited with Deen Atger – a France-born curator and producer based in London. It was Ugly Duck, the community-based artistic space that Atger manages, that produced the world premiere of Kol-Kes’ 2024 immersive theatrical offering exploring modalities of grief, ‘Atenti’. Artists from the host country include Sourjyo Sinha – a musician, producer and event curator based in Kolkata; Arya Rothe – an independent documentary filmmaker based in Pune; and 2023 returnee Oysh – an anti-disciplinary writer, performer, media-maker.
Beyond the 6-day train journey, Kol-Kes is set to conduct performance, writing and editorial workshops rooted in autobiographical sourcing. “Through the InFinitely ReSourced workshops, my hope is to usher another generation of autobiographic creators into the world of critical self-exploration” says Kol-Kes, adding, “this kind of sourcing is particularly urgent in a time when homogeneity is being forced upon us all through the vehicles of racial, gendered, colonial and misogynist subjugation.” Audiences in Kolkata, Bangalore, Goa and Bombay will also be treated to a performance featuring new writing and extracts of Kol-Kes’ poetry cycle, “My Tongue, My Noose” – a work commissioned by Yale University’s African Students Union.
EASTgoesSOUTH is a pilot project that has been made possible with support from the Miller-Zillmer foundation, a passionate team, partners and artists investing in the vision. Kol-Kes adds a discernible touch of Botswana through her presence in he hopes of paving the way for more creative practitioners from the country to join the ever-growing initiative.
