rruytina: above and below

In rruytina: above and below, artist Neika Lehman recovers and reconnects the stories buried at Australia’s first offshore detention centre, paying tribute to the Aboriginal women buried there.

In 1832, the Government of Van Dieman’s Land sent what they thought to be the last Aboriginal freedom fighters into exile at Wybalenna, Flinders Island. Marking the presumed end of Tasmania’s Black War, Wybalenna settlement introduced a new set of struggles for justice for Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Wybalenna, now the site of a crumbling church, holds the unmarked graves of over one hundred Aboriginal people who never made it home.

A descendant of the Aboriginal activists portrayed in the 1992 documentary film, Black Man’s Houses, Neika Lehman revisits the history and current conditions of Wybalenna settlement and works to repatriate the stories of six Aboriginal women across mainland Tasmania.

In this immersive film installation, multiple screens are positioned like portals, using Indigenous astronomy to navigate the viewer back to the sites of the stories. The exhibition meditates on the variant ecosystems that bear these women’s stories, alongside the material conditions of current day Wybalenna. The films capture the site itself – the earth and rock, the church, and the sheep-bitten hills, alluding to what lies above and below.