Take a Drag: Bali 2005-09

15 Feb - 6 Mar

Photographic Exhibition

For five years Cynthia Sciberras observed the world of drag queens – homosexual men who make a living impersonating women. Cynthia spent time in the noisy and popular drag district and cabaret bar, Hulu Café.

Opened in 1990 by a Melbournian butcher, Hulu Café located in the back streets of Legian was the first drag venue in Bali, staging professional drag shows six nights a week. In the beginning, Cynthia’s photographs were taken from the perspective of an audience member, capturing the performance of the impersonators as a voyeur. However, she quickly became determined to become part of this underground culture and ventured backstage into the dressing room of the performers.

Take a Drag is an intimate series of portraits developed over a number of years, set out to explore the boundaries of culturally-defined gender within a marginalized community. These images have, as the artist puts it, ‘an authenticity of the kind found in theatre’, however they set out to provoke the question of what drives gender. To these men, who wished to be viewed as women, gender became a performance, a parade in which they get into their props that are somewhat associated with femaleness.