By way of a dialogue between the two authors – an artist and an art historian – this article reflects on the artistic method of repurposing the colonial archive, in particular the vast collection of photographs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Important contexts for this work include the international practice, established in the 1990s amongst artists, communities, and museums, of addressing hidden histories of war and genocide in the public sphere. In Australia, this included challenging colonial visions and the damaging history of representing First Nations peoples. At the same time, Australian colonial archives increasingly became more accessible and an important cultural and political resource for First Nations peoples. This article considers both the debate around cultural protocols of Indigenous knowledge that has emerged in the last twenty years and the relentless ideology of primitivism that has restricted the visibility of Indigenous loss. Pervading these developments has been the persistent emotional, historical, and political dilemma of how artists access these archives and produce decolonial readings of the ‘mess’ and trauma of colonial events.

中文翻译：

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与遗留图像的相遇：殖民档案中的非殖民化和重新想象摄影证据

通过两位作者（一位艺术家和一位艺术史学家）之间的对话，本文反思了重新利用殖民档案的艺术方法，尤其是土著和托雷斯海峡岛民的大量照片。这项工作的重要背景包括 1990 年代在艺术家、社区和博物馆中建立的国际惯例，旨在解决公共领域隐藏的战争和种族灭绝历史。在澳大利亚，这包括挑战殖民愿景和代表原住民人民的破坏性历史。与此同时，澳大利亚殖民档案越来越容易获得，成为原住民重要的文化和政治资源。本文既考虑了过去 20 年来出现的关于土著知识的文化协议的辩论，也考虑了限制土著丧失可见性的原始主义的无情意识形态。艺术家如何访问这些档案，并对殖民事件的“混乱”和创伤进行非殖民化解读，一直存在着持续的情感、历史和政治困境，这在这些发展中无处不在。