Artist: Bhenji Ra
תַאֲרִיך: 2020
גודל: 180 x 160 cm
מוּזֵיאוֹן: Biennale of Sydney (Sydney, Australia)
טֶכנִיקָה: Acrylic
Bhenji Ra is a transdisciplinary artist currently based on Gadigal land, Eora Nation. Her practice combines dance, video, illustration and community activation. Her work dissects cultural theory and identity, centralising her own personal histories as a tool to reframe performance. She is the mother of Western Sydney based collective and ballroom house SLÉ.Bhenji RaAunty holds my arm up as if it’s floating on a seabed. She tells me to mirror her, her body a reflection of mine, my body a reflection of hers. Moving currents slowly form at the tips of my fingers, a tool to read both space and sea. She tells me to soften my focus, remembering this is an offering to receive and be received. An exchange of body and gesture. A diasporic dowry laced with blood memory and a mapping to home (bahay).If reading comes from shade, then this is pre-Hispanic shade, a deep call to the ballroom girls and oceanic mothers, shared nails, shared hands, shared histories stored in the corner of our bodies, kept for ancestral turn ups and community hall balls.Three things to remember:Pangalay can be danced anywhere to any musicPangalay dies when we stop dancing it (I sense we die too)Keep elbows above shouldersFor the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Filipina Australian artist Bhenji Ra engages Tausug Elder and Pangalay master Sitti Obeso from southern Philippines in performative conversation at the Powerhouse Museum. Bleeding the lines between ocean and land, traditional and contemporary, the original and the diasporic body, this exchange between teacher and student is a generous sharing of a relationship sustained by periodical visits to home country, the sharing of personal ephemera, and online messages across the Pacific Ocean. The series of performance lectures offers an alternative mode of cultural pedagogy that avoids reductive notions around performing culture and learning repertoire.
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