Sabra G Thorner
Biographic Data
| ID | 130380 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sabra G Thorner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sabra G |
| FAMILY NAME | Thorner |
| SIGNATURE | THORNER S G |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7595-3314 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Making Is the Story
In spring 2022, the authors co-led an experimental course and artists' residency called "Decolonizing Museums." The major outcomes were a possum-skin cloak (the first of its kind made in the United States) and a series of high-art photographs of project participants wearing the cloak. This project is part of an initiative to imagine and forge a Living Archive of Aboriginal Art, based in Australia. The objective: to radically reimagine what archiv…
Being Called to Action
There has been wonderful work animating vectors of relatedness, negotiation, and collaboration between museums and "source communities"; foregrounding the significance of objects, what they can/might do, and how they act in and through museums; and highlighting the particularity of the photographic archive (and especially photographs as things in need of specific kinds of attention and care) in contemporary cultural reclamation and (re)vitalizati…
The Photograph as Archive, Reimagining the Archive, the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the unceded land
The photograph as archive
In 2008, an Aboriginal Australian artist based in Melbourne, Australia, created a kangaroo-teeth necklace, revivifying an art/cultural practice for the first time in over a century. She was inspired to do so after viewing an 1880 photograph of an ancestor wearing such adornment. In this article, I bring the necklace and the photograph into the same analytical frame, arguing for the photograph as an archive itself. I consider the trajectories thro…
Maree's Backyard
In this article, four women engage, talk, and write about Indigenous sovereignty in Australia's southeast—the region of Australia most devastated by colonial incursion and the site of vibrant cultural activism in the present day. We are two non‐Indigenous academics (Sabra Thorner and Fran Edmonds) working together with two Indigenous artist‐curators (Maree Clarke and Paola Balla) in a process of collaborative, intercultural culture‐making. We mob…
Remote Avant-Garde
Reviewed by: Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation by Jennifer Loureide Biddle Sabra G. Thorner Jennifer Loureide Biddle, Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 304 pp. Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation, by Jennifer Loureide Biddle, is a welcome addition to the literature on Indigenous Australian art, and more broadly to anthropologies of art, Indigenous Australia,…
Inside the Frame, Outside the Box
In this article, I seek to locate B indi C ole in a movement of A ustralian I ndigenous photo‐media artists who are mobilizing the photographic archive as a form of both aesthetic intervention and cultural activism. Via a close analysis of her work, W athaurong M ob (2008), I argue that high art photography can be used to unsettle dominant stereotypes by producing an alternative visibility, calling attention to pervasive assumptions equating A bo…
Ten Canoes by Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr
First Australians by Rachel Perkins and Beck Cole
Two Exhibitions Resignify Aboriginality and Photographyin Australia's Visual Lexicon
Photography has long been central to the construction of Aboriginal peoples in the Australian national imaginary. In the last 20 years, the social role of photography has shifted: from origins in scopic regimes that racialized and dispossessed Aboriginal peoples to an era of contemporary reappropriation, recontextualizing colonial archives, and producing new Indigenous high art photography. Photographs are no longer stable, visible testimony of I…
Changing the Rules of Engagement
Full‐length, independent feature films Rabbit‐Proof Fence and Whale Rider, both released in 2002, chronicle the journeys of young indigenous female protagonists as they struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds to meet their destinies. The narrative and technical components of these films share striking similarities as they construct stories that are profoundly local, yet widely resonant. This article argues for the consideration of films as…
The photograph as archive
In 2008, an Aboriginal Australian artist based in Melbourne, Australia, created a kangaroo-teeth necklace, revivifying an art/cultural practice for the first time in over a century. She was inspired to do so after viewing an 1880 photograph of an ancestor wearing such adornment. In this article, I bring the necklace and the photograph into the same analytical frame, arguing for the photograph as an archive itself. I consider the trajectories thro…
Being Called to Action
There has been wonderful work animating vectors of relatedness, negotiation, and collaboration between museums and "source communities"; foregrounding the significance of objects, what they can/might do, and how they act in and through museums; and highlighting the particularity of the photographic archive (and especially photographs as things in need of specific kinds of attention and care) in contemporary cultural reclamation and (re)vitalizati…
Two Exhibitions Resignify Aboriginality and Photographyin Australia's Visual Lexicon
Photography has long been central to the construction of Aboriginal peoples in the Australian national imaginary. In the last 20 years, the social role of photography has shifted: from origins in scopic regimes that racialized and dispossessed Aboriginal peoples to an era of contemporary reappropriation, recontextualizing colonial archives, and producing new Indigenous high art photography. Photographs are no longer stable, visible testimony of I…
Inside the Frame, Outside the Box
In this article, I seek to locate B indi C ole in a movement of A ustralian I ndigenous photo‐media artists who are mobilizing the photographic archive as a form of both aesthetic intervention and cultural activism. Via a close analysis of her work, W athaurong M ob (2008), I argue that high art photography can be used to unsettle dominant stereotypes by producing an alternative visibility, calling attention to pervasive assumptions equating A bo…
Ten Canoes by Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr
First Australians by Rachel Perkins and Beck Cole
Changing the Rules of Engagement
Full‐length, independent feature films Rabbit‐Proof Fence and Whale Rider, both released in 2002, chronicle the journeys of young indigenous female protagonists as they struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds to meet their destinies. The narrative and technical components of these films share striking similarities as they construct stories that are profoundly local, yet widely resonant. This article argues for the consideration of films as…
Two Exhibitions Resignify Aboriginality and Photographyin Australia's Visual Lexicon
Photography has long been central to the construction of Aboriginal peoples in the Australian national imaginary. In the last 20 years, the social role of photography has shifted: from origins in scopic regimes that racialized and dispossessed Aboriginal peoples to an era of contemporary reappropriation, recontextualizing colonial archives, and producing new Indigenous high art photography. Photographs are no longer stable, visible testimony of I…
Ten Canoes by Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr
First Australians by Rachel Perkins and Beck Cole
Inside the Frame, Outside the Box
In this article, I seek to locate B indi C ole in a movement of A ustralian I ndigenous photo‐media artists who are mobilizing the photographic archive as a form of both aesthetic intervention and cultural activism. Via a close analysis of her work, W athaurong M ob (2008), I argue that high art photography can be used to unsettle dominant stereotypes by producing an alternative visibility, calling attention to pervasive assumptions equating A bo…
Remote Avant-Garde
Reviewed by: Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation by Jennifer Loureide Biddle Sabra G. Thorner Jennifer Loureide Biddle, Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 304 pp. Remote Avant-Garde: Aboriginal Art under Occupation, by Jennifer Loureide Biddle, is a welcome addition to the literature on Indigenous Australian art, and more broadly to anthropologies of art, Indigenous Australia,…
Maree's Backyard
In this article, four women engage, talk, and write about Indigenous sovereignty in Australia's southeast—the region of Australia most devastated by colonial incursion and the site of vibrant cultural activism in the present day. We are two non‐Indigenous academics (Sabra Thorner and Fran Edmonds) working together with two Indigenous artist‐curators (Maree Clarke and Paola Balla) in a process of collaborative, intercultural culture‐making. We mob…
The photograph as archive
In 2008, an Aboriginal Australian artist based in Melbourne, Australia, created a kangaroo-teeth necklace, revivifying an art/cultural practice for the first time in over a century. She was inspired to do so after viewing an 1880 photograph of an ancestor wearing such adornment. In this article, I bring the necklace and the photograph into the same analytical frame, arguing for the photograph as an archive itself. I consider the trajectories thro…
The Photograph as Archive, Reimagining the Archive, the Living Archive of Aboriginal Art
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the unceded land
Being Called to Action
There has been wonderful work animating vectors of relatedness, negotiation, and collaboration between museums and "source communities"; foregrounding the significance of objects, what they can/might do, and how they act in and through museums; and highlighting the particularity of the photographic archive (and especially photographs as things in need of specific kinds of attention and care) in contemporary cultural reclamation and (re)vitalizati…
The Making Is the Story
In spring 2022, the authors co-led an experimental course and artists' residency called "Decolonizing Museums." The major outcomes were a possum-skin cloak (the first of its kind made in the United States) and a series of high-art photographs of project participants wearing the cloak. This project is part of an initiative to imagine and forge a Living Archive of Aboriginal Art, based in Australia. The objective: to radically reimagine what archiv…
Museums and Cultural Heritage (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works) · History (5 works) · Indigenous (5 works) · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights (5 works) · Media studies (5 works) · Visual arts (5 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (4 works)