Silent Scream (Anthropocene)
The inspiration for this piece came from an exhibit I saw at Dark Mona. It depicted a thylacine; not in its natural form, but as the frightening Ogoh-ogoh, a traditional Indonesian monster. This fearsome figure provided a receptacle for the viewer’s fears and darkest thoughts, to be purged by the fire within.
Sadly, the thylacine was systematically hunted to extinction, a victim of colonialism’s quest to conquer the land and the white settler’s impact on Australia’s delicate ecosystem.
In Silent Scream, the thylacine is out of focus, locked in the temporal ambiguity of its past, present, and future. Here, the animal teeters on the point of extinction. The thylacine struggles through a cloud heavy with the names of extinct and near-extinct creatures, and threatening climate change events. Temporally trapped and environmentally encumbered, the thylacine pours out a silent scream.