Mining subjectivities uses open cut mining sites as a point through which to investigate colonial extraction economies over both the landscape and the subjective landscape of bodies. The project started through Carolyn Craig’s obsession with mining images on the internet that replicate the sublime landscape.
These images use the western metaphoric trope to enact a sequence of ideological power relations over processes of viewing and consuming place. Craig appropriates these images and then intervenes with them through drawing processes to bring back bodily desire into the landscape of extraction. These images are then returned to the materiality of mining through the use of substances that mimic the materials of extraction such as concrete, metal and building insulation rolls. Coal dust is integrated into the printed process in order to embed residues of man’s capital desire.
Image: Carolyn Craig, 2018, Mining Subjectivities, aluminium, red oxide dust iron filings, screenprint.