SILSILA is a worker-owned performance collective of queer, trans, and non-binary artists dedicated to reclaiming our ancestral roots outside of normative diasporic spaces. Grounded in liberation, we ensure our cultural workers receive financial equity and unshakeable community.
reclaiming ancestry
We practice Ibtida—returning to our origins not to repeat the past, but to reclaim it. We believe that we can connect with our ancestral and ethereal roots without being bound by the rigid, patriarchal, or colonial rules that have historically stifled us. This is a liberated reclamation: taking back our classical sounds, stories, and movements and imbuing them with our own contemporary agency.
intersectional femme power
Grounded in the framework of Kimberlé Crenshaw and other Black and Brown theorists, we center those at the intersections of identity—the queer, trans, disabled, and those marginalized by society. We stand in solidarity with sex workers and other femme laborers, creating a sacred sanctuary where feminine energy and aesthetic beauty are forms of resistance. Our intersections are a source of pleasure and power.
art as labor
We recognize the artist as a Cultural Worker. Inspired by the radical history of workers' rights—from the strikers in saris led by Jayaben Desai to the Solidarity Economy models of SELC and the Boston Ujima Project—we refuse the paid in exposure model. We advocate for a world where humans are compensated fairly, protected legally, and provided with the financial equity needed to thrive.