Ra Oblivion’s reign is just beginning

If you don’t consider Ra Oblivion a household (dormhold?) name, it’s easy to assume that you haven’t completed your yassification journey yet. Saturated in a punk Vivienne Westwood aesthetic, Ra Oblivion has descended on the USC community to begin her reign as high priestess to everything beautiful. 

If you’re not familiar with drag, the art expression has a rich history that can be traced back to Shakespearean theater, and unsurprisingly, the oppressive rule of the church at the time. However, it’s not a stretch to say that the church actually played a part in creating drag! Due to their rule that only men were allowed to perform on stage, the church implicitly encouraged men at the time to find their inner slay by donning a different gender expression. 

In the modern day, drag has taken the world by storm, expanding outside just the theater space to an artistic performance of gender expression. One of these performance artists is Saneel Sharma, a sophomore majoring in design who happens to make a very convincing “sexy alien… who happens to be Indian.”

As one of Hayward, Calif.’s biggest exports (along with other less notable figures such as Dwayne Johnson and USC alumna Saweetie), Sharma discovered Ra while in the Hayward Unified School District. 

“I was taking art classes in high school and my art teacher, Carrie King, had a bunch of drag queen posters on her wall. I was so amazed by and questioning the [queer imagery] I saw in her classroom,” Ra said. “And that’s where she introduced me to drag and immediately I was hooked. I started drag when I started learning about it, because that’s how invested I was into being part of that culture.”

Since then, Ra Oblivion has seen a fierce come-up at USC, where her artistry has found a home. At last year’s Queer and Ally Student Assembly-hosted Annual Drag Show, Ra Oblivion met then director Sasha Urban, who helped her find opportunities to perform. 

“I’ve been just taking the opportunities, but recently I’ve been actually going out and being involved in [the] community by dressing in drag even if I’m not performing… to show that I am interested in being part of their show,” Ra said. “How I’m still getting gigs is by going out and interacting with people in the community and actually further solidifying a name in the [Los Angeles] drag scene.”

Though Ra Oblivion has bided her time as an up-and-coming artist, she can recount her struggle with validation from the wider drag community. When queens Bombae and Kiara from Canada’s Drag Race began following Ra on Instagram, she found herself gaining recognition from her local community. However, she also felt that “they only took me seriously by seeing that I was followed by verified people.”

For an artist who sees drag as a career, Ra Oblivion has spent a lot of time grappling with these ideas of recognition and validation. Visually, Ra is the oeuvre of her influences, ranging from the alluring Bollywood characters of her childhood to the rich furies of Alexander McQueen. There is a complexity to the expression itself, and yet the validation of queer art — which has recently been a widely-discussed topic — has deeper connections to Saneel. 

“There’s been a shift where the more I dressed up as Ra, the more I wondered how comfortable I would feel slowly implicating feminine characteristics of myself out of drag. And right now, I’m in this current stage of my gender where I feel between being genderfluid and trans-fem,” Ra said. “I don’t think I would have realized that if I didn’t dress up as Ra. I don’t think Saneel would have realized how femininity feels the most natural to them.”

As the creative director of QuASA’s 2023 Annual Drag Show, Ra Oblivion has transitioned from student to mentor.

“Ra actually does a lot of gigs outside of just USC. They’ve had a lot of professional experience to drag, which makes it less of a hobby and much more of an actual career,” said Anh Nguyen, Ra’s colleague. “They bring more seriousness to drag. Ra’s very helpful to other drag queens, especially aspiring drag queens.”

Ra Oblivion shows no signs of stopping at just this upcoming event. The queen has plans to compete in “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and dive into fashion and beauty endeavors.

“I have nothing but admiration for Ra Oblivion. She is an incredibly talented performer, makeup artist, wig artist and she is elevating college drag with everything that she does,” QuASA executive director Hannah Gardiner, known as Daisy Darling, said. “I’m really lucky to have her on our show and to have her support as a director.” 

 Whether you’re just getting to know drag or are an Oblivionator, Ra is an incomparable force of nature to look out for. To experience the magic of Ra Oblivion in person, mark your calendars for the 2023 Annual Drag Show on Jan. 28.

“I want to show the power of being queer and Indian and hyper feminine all at once and truly making a career out of that,” Ra said. “Other Indian kids in my position or my age that are male, they’re taught to be doctors and they’re told to not take an artistic path and I want to make the legacy of truly being comfortable with how you want to live your life.”