An Exploration of Australia’s Nuclear History and Indigenous Dehumanization
Yhonnie Scarce grew up in the aftermath of the dark nuclear weapon tests in South Australia in the 1950s and 60s, near her birthplace of Woomera. From a tender age, she heard stories from elders about the catastrophic roar when the sky turns red and a poisonous black mist hovers over the desert like a phenomenon.
The glass artist, born in 1973, has spent much of her career exploring the British government’s nuclear weapon tests at Maralinga and Emu Field, which, as she puts it, “lit a fire in my heart that has not been extinguished.”
Explosions ravaged generations of Aboriginal people, as well as military personnel and non-Indigenous civilians, sending radioactive clouds thousands of kilometers, causing burns, blindness, birth defects, and premature death.
When the toxic trails reached Ceduna, where Scarce’s family lived, a radioactive downpour fell from the sky, burning their skin. Their concerns about burns were dismissed by doctors who steadfastly claimed it was a measles outbreak. But today, according to Scarce, cancer is prevalent in the town.
“I call it mass genocide,” says Scarce. “I don’t know if we will ever find out how many Aboriginal people died during that 10-year period. But I can imagine it’s in the thousands.”
Standing in the dark space of the Western Australian Art Gallery’s retrospective exhibition “Scarce The Light of Day,” I suddenly feel motionless and overwhelmed, as if the wind has been knocked out of me.
Thousands of glass yams hang on steel wires, reminiscent of menacing clouds drifting across the desert. In three “cloud” installations by Scarce – Thunder Raining Poison, Death Zephyr, and Cloud Chamber – each yam shaped like a droplet represents a lost Aboriginal life, forming a colossal, shimmering requiem for those whose stories have been buried.
Thousands of tiny shadows merge on the gallery floor beneath the glass yams, which, according to Scarce, are an integral part of the work. “These are the elders,” she says, referring to the multitude of unregistered and unknown victims. “Every time these clouds settle somewhere, they show us something else.”
