Imagine Mud on Your Bedroom Walls (2024)
By Yani Clarke
Artist Bio
Yani Clarke is a documentary art photographer based in Lismore, Northern Rivers, New South Wales, Australia, on Bundjalung Country. Through her photographic practice, Yani explores society’s fringes with a striking ability to capture life’s untold stories.
Artist Statement / Description of artwork
The traces of a climate-induced disaster linger, etched into the walls of an abandoned bedroom in Northern Rivers, NSW. This photograph reveals a constellation of marks left by the 2022 floods—a haunting testament to the force of nature. Part of the NSW Government’s buyback scheme, this structurally sound home, like hundreds of others, now stands empty, fenced off, a relic of interrupted lives and unfulfilled recovery.
 
 The textured wall, marked yet strangely beautiful, speaks to resilience and loss, a visual reminder of the waters that surged through and left their story behind. Still Here, my ongoing series, captures the quiet persistence of these spaces, inviting reflection on the fragile notion of home in the face of climate change. This work meditates on what is left behind, both physically and emotionally, when a community is shaped by forces beyond its control.