Grada Kilomba is a Berlin based Portuguese born writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist combining Postcolonial theory with Psychoanalysis. Her work draws on gender, race, trauma and memory, and has been translated into several languages and published in international anthologies, magazines, and journals as well as staged internationally.
Her work is best known for using a variety of formats, from print publications to staged readings and performance, combining both academic and lyrical narrative, creating a very unique literary style.
In her recent works Kilomba has been particularly engaged on staging and performing theoretical and political texts, contradicting the idea of disembodied theories, by exploring the emotionality and visuality these texts might embody.
This includes a film on the African liberation leader Amílcar Cabral, titled: “Conakry” (2013), as well as the staging of “Plantation Memories” (2013), a piece exposing the violence and trauma of everyday racism, adapted into and directed as a staged reading by Kilomba, at the theater Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Berlin.
Kilomba has been lecturing at several international universities in the frame of Postcolonial studies, and last was a Guest Professor for Gender Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin, where she lectured: Decolonial Feminism, Decolonising and Performing Knowledge.
She is the co-editor of “Mythen, Masken and Subjekte” (2005), an anthology on Critical Whiteness; and the author of “Plantation Memories” (2008), a compilation of episodes of everyday racism written in the form of short psychoanalytical stories.
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