A longing for far off places
Bhenji Ra , Soyeohang Rai , Tripty Tamang Pakhrin
5–29 Aug 2026
Family, home, kin, place—these terms are recurrent in contemporary discourse, but how malleable are their meanings? In ‘A longing for far off places,’ Bhenji Ra, Soyeohang Rai, and Tripty Tamang Pakhrin examine these themes through upendings of queer and heteronormative family structures, sexuality, longing, and diasporic experience. Curators Laura McLean and Josephine Mead have both recently given birth to their first child. Through the lens of early motherhood, the artist’s works have taken on new meanings during the curatorial process. In realising ‘A longing for far off places’, personal experience becomes curatorial strategy, and expanded understandings of family and kin, and place and home come to the fore.
In ‘A longing for far off places’, Bhenji Ra, Soyeohang Rai, and Tripty Tamang Pakhrin examine family, kin, place, and home through upendings of queer and heteronormative family structures, sexuality, longing, and diasporic experience. Curators Laura McLean and Josephine Mead have both recently given birth to their first child. Through the lens of early motherhood, they consider expanded understandings of family and kin, and place and home, in relation to the artist’s works.
Bhenji Ra is an Australian-Filipina artist working at the intersections of dance, video, and community activation. Rooted in trans feminist, intergenerational practice, her work engages with invisible social narratives of both trauma and rejuvenation, offering possibilities to decolonize community and reinvent becoming. Guided by her ancestral and queer genealogies, she weaves ritual and collective action with the intimacies of her personhood. Her assemblage of myth, archive, and pedagogy, especially in non-western choreography, results in collaborative and relational performances, installations and film work. She is the legendary mother of Sydney and Manila based ballroom house, Juicy Couture and a co-founder of the award winning artist collective Club Ate.
Soyeohang Rai (b.2001, Sikkim) works with images and texts as a poet and photographer, based in New Delhi, India. His work is an exploration of rural folk in a contemporary narrative and man-made identities. Among his interests are indigenous queer representation, oral narratives of the Himalayas and a keen interest in fashion as a historical tool of inquiry. His work is selectively accessible and is currently building his archive.
Tripty Tamang Pakhrin is a Nepali visual artist who lives and works in Syracuse, New York. She uses photography, video and text to create layered narratives that look inward to personal and familial experiences, and outward to contemporary issues in Nepal. She draws her visual language from the entangling relationship between her three parents and the mundanities of her childhood experience of growing up in a hotel in a small border town in eastern Nepal. She received VII Foundation’s The Alexandra Boulat Grant in 2019 to study at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. She’s an MFA in Art Photography candidate at Syracuse University.
Josephine Mead is a visual artist, curator & writer, residing on Wurundjeri woi-wurrung Country. Her multidisciplinary practices explores personal notions of support. Her recent work is focused on queer love and mothering. She has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions, in Australia and abroad. She has undertaken residency programs in rural Victoria, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey, Greece and Germany. She co-founded Co- Publishing (with Christine McFetridge) and was a founding Artistic Director of MILK Gallery. In 2023 she participated in the Writing in the Expanded Field program through the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA). She was Chair of Artistic Directors for Blindside Gallery from 2020-2022 and Community Coordinator in 2024-2025. She regularly contributes to Art Guide and Art Collector Magazine.
Laura McLean is a curator and researcher, living and working between Naarm Melbourne and Meanjin Brisbane. As Associate Curator at Liquid Architecture and Artistic Director at Blindside, she works with experimental practices and critical ideas engaging sound, listening, and media technologies across Australia and the Asia-Pacific. Past curatorial projects include The place we do not know is the place we are looking for and Recompositions, West Space x Liquid Architecture x Sarai, Melbourne (2025); Capture All, Liquid Architecture x Sarai, Melbourne/Delhi (2021-2024); CIVICS, Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery, Melbourne (2020); Startup States, Sarai-CSDS, Delhi (2019); Jenna Sutela_Orgs, Artistic Bokeh, Vienna (2015); and Contingent Movements Archive, Maldives Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale and UNESCO, Paris (2013). Her writing has been published by journals including ArtAsiaPacific, Eyeline, HKW Technosphere Magazine, and the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art. Laura holds an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths and is completing a PhD in Curatorial Practice at Monash University.