Dior Thiam The Myth of Emptiness (mosaic), 2022 Inject print and oil on wood Work: 60 x 40 cm
This series addresses the power of mis/representation and erasure. It also considers ways of seeing and imagining space, deconstructing and unveiling the epistemic and aesthetic traditions upon which we have constructed our relationship with nature. This is done through an exploration of the relationship between sentimental colonial aesthetics in landscape photography.
The works investigate how landscape photography forged and cemented the colonial relationship to nature as an enclosed space to be controlled and exploited. This reframing of nature as landscape produced a perception of nature as “idyllic, paradisiac, empty, wild, barren, unorganised and unproductive”, according to the artist. The myth of emptiness - echoing the racist myth of Indigenous peoples as a “people without history” - underpins the narrative of colonialism as a natural, necessary and civilisational system. This is linked to the erasure of Indigenous languages, knowledge and practices as well as land dispossessions, forced migrations and genocides of the Indigenous peoples living on and with that land before colonisation.
The original photographs are by Eduard Kiewning and Robert Lohmeyer, taken during two different colonial expeditions into the former German colonies “Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika (today’s Namibia) and Cameroon, the first in 1907 by Robert Lohmeyer, the second in 1909 by Eduard Kiewning. First published in: “Die Deutschen Kolonien”, Carl Weller Verlag für Farbfotografie, 1910 Berlin.
