“Country bin pull‘em, Looking back together” at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt

What significance does millennia-old rock art from Australia have today? What potential do ethnographic and historical collections hold for Indigenous communities, museums and post-colonial cooperation? The Indigenous Wanjina Wunggurr Community – comprising the Woddordda, Ngarinyin and Wunambal people – and the Weltkulturen Museum are now coming together to look back at the 1938 Frobenius Expedition from Frankfurt to the Kimberley region of North-West Australia.

Visitors will be able to see copies of monumental rock paintings, historical photographs and ethnographic objects. There will also be contemporary works by Indigenous artists which have been created through a process of engaging with the collections of the Frobenius Institute and the Weltkulturen Museum.

“Country bin pull’em” has emerged from a joint examination into the expedition’s research history alongside contemporary interpretations of the Indigenous cultural heritage. In addition, the show raises issues about the collection’s provenance and shares ideas about returning cultural heritage in digital form.

The title in Kimberley Kriol “Country bin pull’em“ was chosen by the Indigenous project partners. Alluding to a reversal of perspectives, it underscores their Country’s agency, emphasising the Indigenous viewpoint that the ‘living’ land itself – the Country – is what drew the German researchers in. Over eighty years later, this same agency has revived the relationships between the Wanjina Wunggur Community and the Frankfurt collecting institutions.

The exhibition is the result of a long-term international research project initiated by the Wanjina Wunggurr Community that seeks to contribute towards decolonising the museums’ collections.

It is a joint endeavour between the Weltkulturen Museum, the Dambimangari, Wilinggin and Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporations, the Frobenius Institute (which is associated with the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt) and the Centre for Rock Art Research at the The University of Western Australia in Perth.