Blackboy is conceived as a self-portrait of the artist, Dale Harding, a descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu, and Garingbal peoples of Central Queensland. In his work, Harding unearths the untold histories of Indigenous communities, confronting the colonial consciousness of contemporary Australia. The glass sculpture was made to match the length of the artist’s body (6 feet, 6 inches); the slight overhang beyond the shelf on which it rests represents his feeling of being oversized and queer—a sense of not fitting in. The shelf also evokes the grim history of displaying Indigenous bodies and objects in Australia.

The back of the glass is sprayed with resin that comes from a plant commonly known as blackboy (genus Xanthorrhoea). Early colonizers gave this derogatory name to the plant to insinuate that it bore a resemblance to an Aboriginal man holding a spear. By using this racist term as the title of the work, Harding reclaims the plant’s indigeneity and creates a direct relationship between his own body and its history, color, and materiality.