Bhenji Ra:
Body of Work
For multidisciplinary artist and dancer Bhenji Ra, every movement is an act of cultural survival and collective agency. Fuelled by ancestral energies, modern-day trauma and social power structures, her body-centred practice is a history lesson on decolonial awakening and the cruciality of belonging and empowerment for intersectional people of colour.
Image credit: Bhenji Ra, Sissy Ball, 2020. Photo: Ken Leanfore. Courtesy the artist and QAGOMA, Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art
“When the colour of your skin is seen as a weapon, you will never be seen as unarmed.” This universal quote has passed through marginalised mouths over the years – via protest signs, community speeches and Instagram reposts – and it’s a line that dug into my mind during my conversation with Sydney-based artist Bhenji Ra. Grounded by her lived experience as a trans woman of Filipinx descent, Ra uses her body as an investigational device – oscillating between dance, choreography, video installations and club events – to amplify trans, queer, migrant and intercultural narratives. So, let me remix the quote: Ra is a moving target and she is definitely armed. Live stages, gallery foyers, the streets and social media feeds become performative vehicles for the artist to dispense communal energies of survival and liberation.
Ra runs the iconic Sissy Ball, touted as the largest annual community ball event in the Asia Pacific. She also mentors emerging trans and queer dancers as the ‘mother’ of Western Sydney vogue group House of Slé, which she established after time spent with QTPOC (queer and trans people of colour) communities in New York, where she was studying dance during her early 20s. “When I came back to Sydney,” she tells me, “I found out that there were pockets of young trans and gender diverse people of colour living in the suburbs, who had only experienced vogue and foreign dance culture online, but couldn’t find any [physical] spaces where they could manifest or utilise this.” Forming the..Subscribe to read this article in full
