The Artist as Pemulwuy: Somatic Histories, Stolen Remains and Contemporary Indigenous Art

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the past 40 years, campaigns for the return of Indigenous remains stored in collections around the world—known collectively as the repatriation movement—have coincided with an elevation of Indigenous art to a central role in Australian culture, and to a proliferation of creative works that reflect on settler-colonial legacies. Analysis of key works by leading artists Daniel Boyd and Brook Andrew, who work with human remains or their representations, helps to historicise the emergence of a phenomenon that I call “somatic history”. These pieces incorporate human remains to evoke a dense combination of colonial history, collective memory and present-day Indigenous identity. These forms of history-making function as affective interventions during a time when national aspirations for Indigenous self-determination have been consistently stymied. As with repatriation itself, a practice in which temporalities tangle as present-day communities seek care for once-lost Ancestors, these artworks position historical transgression within a present of structural harm to resist a triumphalist national narrative of progress that disowns the colonial era.