Camille Mbayo
2024-25 Culture Push Black Utopian Fellow
Camille-Louise “Cam” Kouba Mbayo (she, they, we) is a queer Congolese-born Brooklyn-based abolitionist, abortion doula, nerd-artist, daughter, sister, friend, process becoming.
Cam is committed to living fully in the present moment and believes there is an artistry in that. With the engineering tools they’ve acquired through academia and their Indigenous knowledge systems Cam works at the intersection of art, tech, culture, and education.
Living themselves at the intersection of many identities, as they continue to figure out their place in the world and their relationship to land, belonging, and being good kin, they are learning how to build communities rooted in love, care, and right relationships. In the making of those communities, Cam is interested in exploring art as a portal to different futures.
In between napping, Cam can be found in trees, on wheels, reading books, engineering, dancing, meditating, adventuring, talking about colonialism and the white christian supremacists, painting, playing board games, and loving and laughing with community.
PROJECT :
The project is an immersive afrofuturist story that weaves together elements of the past and uses play to explore engineering concepts. The story unfolds based on participant interest, culminating in a co-created storybook for young children and a cooperative board game for older participants.