d harding

d harding is a Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal artist born on Barada Barna Country in Moranbah, Queensland, in 1982. They currently live and work between Turrbal and Yagara Country in Meanjin/Brisbane, Queensland, and Paris, France.

A leading contemporary practitioner, harding works across a wide range of media to engage with the visual, social and philosophical languages of their communities as an enduring cultural continuum. Their practice draws deeply on the spiritual and cultural sensibilities inherited from their Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal lineages, which they sustain and rearticulate within contemporary art contexts internationally.

For Yield Strength, harding presents breaking boundaries (fence), a work that confronts the violence of enclosure. To create the piece, the artist cast an agricultural fence post once used to divide their Bidjara ancestral land. This act of casting becomes an act of doubling: harding appropriates the original act of appropriation. The rigid wooden post — a tool of settler boundary-making — is transformed into a pliant, silicone form. Limp and yielding, it becomes a quiet but potent marker, revealing the fragility of imposed borders and the enduring presence of Country.