The exhibition includes the seven cyanotypes Oh created for "Spiral History – TIDE" (2023), a zine developed in collaboration with writer/translator Michiyo Miyake. As a creative duo, Oh and Miyake are known as “textus.”

"Spiral History – TIDE" documents the history of the islands where Australia's offshore immigration detention centers are located, connecting stories of labor migration, imperialism, and incarceration between Australia, Japan, and the islands across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Australia’s detention centers continue to be in use today and have long been subject to controversy for their inhumane conditions. The zine textus created in collaboration specifically examines the history of the detention centers during two periods of intense population—the peak of the phosphate mining industry in the 19th century, and the Imperial Japanese occupation of the islands during WWII.

For this collaborative project, Oh created cyanotypes of archival images from the National Library of Australia, applying the cameraless technique to paper and woven linen. The unpredictability of the cyanotype printing process makes the works precarious and hard to discern, much like the “bare lives” of incarcerees, refugees, and asylum seekers who have been held in Australia's detention centers over the years. Made up of four images, "Los Negros Island 1949" (2022) depicts aerial views of Lombrum Naval Base, an air base built by Korean and Japanese labor during the Japanese occupation of Manus Island (now Papua New Guinea), used as a brutal detention center in the early 1950s. In "Phosphate fields" (2022), "Landscape of Lagoon in Nauru" (2023), and "Aerial photography, Momote" (2022), the artist’s cyanotyping process completely abstracted the archival imagery, producing obscure but highly textural patterns reminiscent of warp print ikat patterns. In "Phosphate fields in Banaba Island" (2022), "Mother Mountain" (2023), and "Road in PNG and railway tracks in Christmas Island" (2023), the strong horizon line of the landscape allows the images to retain their realism to a certain extent, bringing forth the motif of connected landscapes also present in Oh’s "Nautical Maps series. "

without names, without freedom
or any form of agency over their own lives.
a state of being deprived of
the right to have rights,
identified and controlled by
number and barcode.
lives without legal protection,
identity suspended.
a state of being nobody;
how long can the human spirit endure that?
Prolonged detention with no end in sight,
even prayer abandoned.
those who once paddled out into the night sea
risking their lives have forgotten how to dream.

Excerpt from “V,” Michiyo Miyake, Spiral History - TIDE.


Image at the left: Road around Blanche Bay, Rabaul, New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea, approximately 1916, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-152967114
Image reference at the right: British Phosphate Commission. , Christmas Island Phosphate Company railway tracks, Christmas Island, approximately 1920, National Library of Australia, nla.obj-2442073609