Elle Barbara is a Montréal-based avant-garde singer-songwriter, song selector (TS Ellise), pinup, speaker, writer, director, curator, performance artist and intervention worker whose musical output combines elements of soul, psychedelia, jazz, and underground. A lover of the odd, dark, or overlooked elements in pop music, Elle rose from artist-run spaces at the turn of the 2010s and has seen their work soar to enduring acclaim. In recent years, Elle Barbara‘s has centred efforts around trans and queer community organizing, including contributions in Montréal’s emerging ballroom scene as the Iconic Mother of the Idiosyncratic Meta House of Barbara. The House of Barbara, in addition to throwing balls, is a collective whose transdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, activism and DJing. Elle’s current musical incarnation (Elle Barbara’s Black Space) aims to centre intersectional Blackness and reject anti-Black tropes within the city’s art and music spaces.