Maison chaos is a show woven from committed poetry, slam, lyrical song, electronic music and ambient soundscapes that maps the traces left by misogynist violence on the body, the earth and memory.

Joëlle Sambi’s harsh words and searing poetry strike at these traces, stripping them bare and exposing them. Telling the story of skin under siege, of a bumpy road, of rumbling anger, of a stifled voice, of the victim, good or bad, or the one we don’t want to be. Questioning the murky waters and endless spiral of patriarchy: first the ‘they’, then only the ‘them’, the monopolisation of skins, the enclave of minds, the cyclical violence, the immensity of silence, of indifference, of chaos…

Where is the way out of these traps and impasses, the way out of the mess? Where is the place of peace? ‘There are only our bodies-territories, places of struggle, spaces of combat from which we survive’, Joëlle proclaims with her sharp pen that strips away and broadens our vision. “To tell in order to destroy and remake. To tell in order to start again and act”. Whether intimate, geographical or mental, the roads to survival are singular, full of cracks and sometimes life-saving.

“There are glimpses of fireflies in my memory. They don’t illuminate me, they blind me. They are the flame that keeps me alive. I never forget. No detail, however vague. A woman’s body is a territory.

Author, poet, slammer, Afrofeminist, LGBTQIA+ activist, e