terra nullius

2024

Review: Emptiness is the Mirage of the New Frontier in ann haeyoung’s Exhibition terra nullius 🔗
Essay: there is no terra nullius 🔗

Early during Western colonial times, the rhetorical assertion of terra nullius was used to erase claims to the land by its existing inhabitants. Terra nullius creates a conceptual void in the colonial imagination, and transforms land that is settled and cultivated to land that is empty, underutilized, and awaiting “civilized” development. It is a term that has distinguished invasion from settlement.

Terra nullius, and the related concept of frontier ideology, are central to Western notions of progress. The frontier and empty lands beyond it are not physical places. They are the promise of endless extraction of resources and infinite expansion of markets.

In my exhibition for the Roswell Museum, I examined the myth of terra nullius through three locations: the mine, the radio telescope, and the optical telescope.