Installation view of ‘Maḏayin – Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala’ at Hood Museum of Art, Photo Hood Museum of Art
For millennia, Yolŋu people around Yirrkala in northern Australia have painted their sacred clan designs on their bodies and ceremonial objects. These designs—called miny’tji—are not merely decorative: they are the sacred patterns of the ancestral land itself. Yolŋu people describe them as maḏayin: a term that encompasses both the sacred and the beautiful. With the arrival of Europeans in the twentieth century, Yolŋu people turned to the existing medium of painting on eucalyptus bark with ochres to express the power and beauty of their culture. The result was an outpouring of creativity that continues to this day as artists find new and innovative ways to transform their ancient clan designs into compelling contemporary statements.
Drawn from the world’s most important holdings of Aboriginal bark paintings, including the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, the University of Melbourne, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Maḏayin will survey eight decades of artistic production at Yirrkala, from 1937 to the present, including 33 new works commissioned especially for the exhibition through the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Center at Yirrkala.
The curatorial team includes both Yolŋu and non-Indigenous curators. The paintings on bark will be accompanied by an extensive media component including video, audio recordings and archival photographs, developed by the Aboriginal media unit at Yirrkala, The Mulka Project. The exhibition will tour the USA in 2022-2024.
Maḏayin will offer a rare opportunity for American audiences to experience the grace and majesty of one of the world’s richest artistic traditions. The exhibition shows bark painting to be a dynamic tradition, brought forward by the artists of Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Art Center at Yirrkala. Ancient mark making traditions are carried into the present through the passion and artistry of these leading artists. Here in a remote corner of Australia has emerged one of the most powerful painting movements of our time.
VENUES AND DATES:
- Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth
3 Sep. – 4 Dec. 2022 - American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Centre, Washington DC
4 Feb. – 21 May 2023 - Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach
20 Aug. 2023 – 14 Jan. 2024 - The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
22 Feb. – 21 July 2024 - Asia Society, New York
17 Sep. 2024 – 5 Jan. 2025
SOURCE: Kluge-Ruhe, Charlottesville.