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.







a device for crushing ore
2024


papermaché, wood, steel, paint, motor, wire, rocks, concrete, hair





the transit of Venus
2024


video, 6m 11s

full text from the video 🔗
 


an array
2024


paper-maché, steel, speaker

27 handmade unidirectional speakers playing sounds of local wildlife and natural phenomena
 



ann [ at ] a-tbd.com
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