Mo Ganji: Quoll | Beutelmarder | Dasyurus sp. | No. 171/250 from work group 8/99

Mo Ganji situates the quoll — a nocturnal carnivorous marsupial occupying forests, woodlands and rocky habitats — within the discipline of the single line, letting essence emerge through reduction. The unbroken line condenses the being to a coherent presence, withholding behavior and pattern so that what remains is not a portrait, but a core. In Ganji’s sense, the line may just as easily stand for something else, underscoring that every depicted animal is also a provisional human concept.

Dasyurus sp. is not assessed as a single taxon on the IUCN Red List, as the genus comprises several distinct species with differing conservation statuses. Across Australia and New Guinea, quoll species range from Least Concern (LC) to Endangered (EN) and Critically Endangered (CR). Declines have been most severe on mainland Australia, where several species have disappeared from large parts of their former range.

The principal threats include habitat loss and fragmentation, predation by introduced species such as cats and foxes, poisoning campaigns targeting other predators, and the impacts of altered fire regimes. Because quolls are mid-sized predators with relatively large home ranges, even moderate landscape change can undermine population stability.

Ganji’s single line opens a space in which the quoll can be encountered beyond agility or ferocity. It allows attention to rest on a life positioned between forest floor and canopy, suggesting how beings that once moved freely through varied terrain now persist only where continuity has not yet been broken.