Yhonnie Scarce Weak in Colour but Strong in Blood (detail), 2014 Blown glass and found components Variable dimensions With its laboratory setting, Weak In Colour But Strong In Blood presented at the Art Gallery of NSW references the medico-scientific eugenic practices of the early 1900s, particularly those performed by the Australian anthropologist and ethnologist Norman Tindale, including on Scarce’s own family members.Symbolic of Aboriginal people, different fruit skins are squashed into beakers, and the younger, lighter-coloured ones are segregated and separated into other trays ready to be sent to nice new white homes. Then there are the broken black bush plums, disfigured and discarded. Scarce reminds us of the harrowing ordeals that occurred in rooms like these all those years ago. This type of inhumane research resulted in dangerous forms of stereotyping that continue to shape attitudes around Aboriginality.
