YHONNIE SCARCE AND EDITION OFFICE

The colonizers of the Americas, Africa, and Australasia often invoked the principle of terra nullius: that the land belonged to no one and was therefore ripe for the taking. Indigenous peoples who had lived there for thousands of years were cast as primitive hunter-gatherers with no permanent settlements, a distortion used to mask the fact that the land had not been empty, but emptied.

The erasure of Aboriginal connections to land is the basis of (2020), the fifth architecture commission for the National Gallery of Victoria, by Kokatha and Nukunu artist (yams) that glisten against the sober, pitch-black boards. Historical and oral accounts show that this indigenous staple was among numerous crop varieties grown in pastures that were later decimated with the colonial introduction of grazing animals. For Scarce, the glossiness of the glass yams also invites comparisons to the slickness of fish oil and medicinal tree sap, again drawing on Indigenous utilization of the landscape.