Return to Woka

Scanograph on photographic paper

This work reclaims colonial wooden containers and transforms their narrative through cultural resurgence. The original museum archival boxes have been imprinted and etched with South-Eastern Aboriginal markings, informed by embodied cultural knowledge of mark-making. These markings, rooted in the historical and significant cultural practice of marking-marking, challenge the colonial associations of these objects and their history of over-collecting Indigenous cultural materials. In this new iteration, the artwork takes the form of drawings that capture both the applied markings and the archival boxes themselves. Through this process, Indigenous cultural knowledge is centered, creating a dialogue between past, present, and future.

Return to Woka was presented within the Victorian First Peoples Art and Design Showcase in the Melbourne Art Fair 2025.