Author of the article

payal kumar (they/them) is a multidisciplinary cultural worker, medical abolitionist, abortion doula, and organizer whose work is rooted in the in-betweens. Currently based on Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Wampanoag territories, they invoke the power of intergenerational community building to construct tender new possibilities of being beyond borders and capital. Their illustrations, zines, spoken word pieces, and workshops have found a home across Chinatown walls and grassroots protests, in gallery spaces like the Museum of Fine Arts and international TRANS* Future Archives, and through collaborative learning spaces like the Allied Media Conference and the School of Arts and Social Justice Boston. payal's visual work alchemizes folk art from their ancestral villages in Bihar with traditional Americana motifs to amplify peoples’ movements and explore the in-between spaces of trauma, coloniality, queerness, and embodiment. payal was a 2021 recipient of the Boston Foundation’s LAB grant. They are an organizer with Subcontinental Drift Boston, a monthly multilingual open mic centering South Asian diasporic voices, and with transnational organizing collectives fighting for labor, race, caste, and gender equity. Through creative strategies, they cultivate playful spaces that challenge the state's monopoly on Imagination so that we may all fully unearth and activate our collective power. For more information on ​t​heir work, visit:​ ​https://msha.ke/riotlrrrkhi​ | & follow ​their Instagram via​ @riotlrrrkhi