Bad Girls Club: Artist Bhenji Ra curates queer arts program for western Sydney

Interdisciplinary artist Bhenji Ra has curated a new program in western Sydney, titled Bad Girls Club, which will celebrate femme knowledge through a series of free events.

Q Theatre’s Long Table program will see a series of cultural events made available for the public in the atrium of The Joan in Penrith.

Q Theatre said the Long Table is “curated by leaders from local culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), LGBTQI+ and First Nations communities, with the view of to creating a space for discussion, celebration and reflection on their diasporic culture and relationship to Western Sydney.”

Each month’s free events will include panels, parties, catch ups, workshops, and cups of tea, culminating in a final night-time gathering filled with art, food and drink.

Bad Girls Club will aim “to provide a space for radical femme knowledge and expression through a series of panels, workshops and parties.”

Events throughout May will be directed by trans and queer women of colour with local histories of living and existing as femme bodies in western Sydney.

The program aims to highlight how this experience has shaped themselves and their respective artistic and cultural practices.

Q Theatre says Bad Girls Club hopes to engage local women, femmes and queer communities in the Penrith precinct to explore the complexities of existing and reclaiming space within western Sydney.

The program kicks off on Saturday May 4 with a Vogue Beginners Workshop.

Bad Girls Club will also feature a panel discussion of queer, trans and gender non-confirming people of colour, an IDAHOBIT lunch, and will culminate in the Bad Girls Club Ball on May 24.

“I’m so excited to be able to curate this month’s Long Table and to be able to invite members from my community to come and activate the space of Q Theatre,” Ra said.

“As a queer person of colour I think it’s incredibly important for myself and my community to not only take up space within our neighbourhood but to also feel like spaces like these are both welcoming and available for us to use.

“I have engaged many artists and members of the community who exist or were raised within Sydney’s western suburbs who previously have not been granted the space to do what they do.

“It’s important that we continue to claim space and to de-centre Sydney’s inner west and city as the only apparent safe space for queer people to exist and work,” said Ra.

Ra has also curated the past two years of the Sissy Ball, one of Mardi Gras’ most exciting yearly events.

For more information and to RSVP to the free events online, head to qtheatre.com.au.