Elle Barbara is a Montreal-based avant-garde singer-songwriter, song selector (TS Ellise), pinup, speaker, writer, director, curator, 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 Japan and Europe, in a career whose highlights include duets with Laetitia Sadier and R. Stevie Moore. In recent years, Barbara’s efforts have been mainly centered around trans community organizing – including contributions in Montreal’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 music, performance, activism & DJing. Elle’s current musical incarnation (Elle Barbara’s Black Space) boasts excellence in the likes of Markus Lake and Mitch Holtby, and aims to re-center blackness and reject anti-black tropes within the city’s music and art spaces.