our bones in your collections 1997

In these works — our bones in your collections, our hair in your collections and our skin in your collections 1997 — Watson refers to the macabre ethnocentric practice in Western anthropology and museology of collecting Indigenous cultural materials, including human remains such as bones, hair and skin. While living in France in mid-1995 to 1996 as the Moët & Chandon Fellow, Watson visited the Horniman Museum, Science Museum, Museum of Mankind, Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, Cambridge University Museum and the British Museum (Museum of Mankind) in London as part of her ongoing research into the heritage of her grandmother and her Waanyi kinspeople of north-west Queensland. Her visit raised questions about how the cultural material in these museums was acquired. The relics that are etched in these prints come from the Gulf of Carpentaria, near Watson’s ancestral Country. They are based on (without replicating) drawings of armbands, a head band, a fringed skirt, and a pituri bag used for the storing and trading of pituri (native tobacco).