Yhonnie Scarce is an Australian glass artist whose work is held in major Australian galleries.
15 Facts About Yhonnie Scarce
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Yhonnie Scarce is a descendant of the Kokatha and Nukunu people of South Australia, and her art is informed by the effects of colonisation on Indigenous Australia, in particular Aboriginal South Australians.
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Yhonnie Scarce has been active as an artist since completing her first degree in 2003, and teaches at the Centre of Visual Art in the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne.
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Yhonnie Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and lived an itinerant early life, living in Adelaide, Hobart, and Alice Springs, before settling in Adelaide from around 1991.
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Yhonnie Scarce is of the Kothatha people of the Lake Eyre region and Nukunu people of the southern Eyre Peninsula.
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Yhonnie Scarce graduated in 2003 as the first Aboriginal student to graduate from the University of Adelaide with a major in Glass, and was on the Dean's Merit Award List.
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Yhonnie Scarce went on to an honours degree in 2004, during which time she researched the forced removal of Aboriginal people from their country.
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Yhonnie Scarce furthered her academic career by participating in a masterclass at North Lands Creative Glass Centre in Lybster, Scotland, in 2005, and received a Women in Research Fellowship from Monash University, undertaking a Masters of Fine Arts in 2008.
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Yhonnie Scarce's art is informed by the effects of colonisation on Indigenous Australia.
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Yhonnie Scarce is influenced by the qualities of glass as a medium and uses her work to address Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues including genocide, racism, environmental degradation and intergenerational trauma.
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Yhonnie Scarce has travelled through Germany, Poland, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavian states, Japan and the United States, looking at the design of monuments and memorials, in particular those related to nuclear trauma, genocide, massacres, rebellions and war.
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Yhonnie Scarce found that the practice of trading body parts continues today on the dark web, despite the advances in medical ethics, human rights and cultural heritage law and practices.
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Yhonnie Scarce is planning to return to this in order to develop another artwork as a follow-up to Thunder Raining Poison.
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In 2020 Yhonnie Scarce created a work called Cloud Chamber, made from 1,000 glass yams hung from the ceiling, one of a series of works exploring the effects of the British nuclear tests at Maralinga on the Maralinga Tjarutja people.
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In 2008 Yhonnie Scarce was the inaugural South Australian recipient of the Qantas Foundation Encouragement Award.