Nicholas Galanin

Nicholas Galanin, An Unmarked Grave Deep Enough to Bury Colony and Empire, 2024

Excavation.

Nicholas Galanin has cut a hole in the ground on Waiheke in the shape of the iconic Queen Victoria statue in Albert Park, in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, suggesting an excavation or burial. Even as a ghostly absence, Victoria’s shadow looms over the land. Shovels stand by as an invitation to action and a reminder of the collective participation required to bury imperial power structures. An Unmarked Grave Deep Enough to Bury Colony and Empire is a companion to Shadow on the Land, a similar work Galanin made for the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, based on the Captain Cook statue in Hyde Park. Both can be read as graves for colonial figures and reminders of the death they brought to Indigenous people through violence, disease, and dispossession. Galanin says: ‘This is an unmarked grave; the ideas, beliefs, tools, and artifacts buried here are not worthy of commemoration or reverence. They must not be revisited with longing or fondness, and the violence of empire and colony must be buried with complete commitment and finality.’ 

Nicholas Galanin (Lingít, Unangax̂) lives in Sitka, a coastal city on Baranof Island, in southern Alaska. He has apprenticed with master carvers, and earned a BFA in Jewellery Design and Silversmithing from London Guildhall University in 2003, and a Master’s in Indigenous Visual Arts from Massey University, Papaioea/Palmerston North, in 2007. His work—in sculpture, photography, video, performance, and textiles, music and dance—challenges settler-colonial narratives, critiques the commodification of Indigenous culture, and asserts connection to land. It featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and 2020 Sydney Biennale. In 2023, Galanin unveiled his monumental sculpture In Every Language There Is Land/En Cada Lengua Hay una Tierra in New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park. It countered Robert Indiana’s 1960s ‘Love’ graphic, by rendering the word ‘Land’ in the steel tubing used to construct the US–Mexico border wall.