Originally published in The Magazine Antiques, September 23, 2024
Yolŋu bark paintings have been a jewel of Australian art for decades. Classified as “primitive” art for centuries, this indigenous artform is nonetheless among the traditions which would inspire Western modernists–from Picasso to Arthur Boyd and beyond. These spiritual depictions of native animals, fauna, and people are included in the collections of major Aussie museums like the University of Melbourne, the National Gallery of Australia, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Since 2022, a vast collection of the most prominent examples of bark paintings from 1935 to today has come together in the exhibition Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala for the United States to enjoy.
The Yolŋu are a collective cultural group of Australian Aboriginal clans and people who reside in and around Yirrkala, a small community in the Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory in Australia. Among their many artistic traditions, they are famed for their bark paintings, which are traditional paintings made from natural pigments onto a stretched strip of eucalyptus bark. Referred to as maḏayin, the Yolŋu have painted sacred designs on eucalyptus wood since the early 20th century and were used to represent their culture and as a bargaining item for trade. Before bark, the Yolŋu painted sacred clan designs, known as miny’tji, on their bodies and ceremonial objects for millennia.
Maḏayin was created in partnership with the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in Australia after famed Yolŋu bark artist Djambawa Marawili suggested such a show. When forming this exhibition, the institutions were led by Yolŋu curators and knowledge holders who provided guidance and advice. “It’s not the colonial endeavor that has the curators at the center telling the story of this world. It’s Indigenous artists from one of the most remote parts of the planet saying we have the right to speak in this space,” states Henry Skerritt from the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection. “Saying that our experiences of the contemporary time we live in are as valid as those of people anywhere in the world.”
Maḏayin has traveled across the United States and has made its final destination at the Asia Society in New York, which is currently on display until January 5. Although its busy Manhattan locale may seem worlds away from Yirrkala, the museum is a perfect fit to exhibit the show. Asia Society has a long history of engagement with Aboriginal Australian art, creating the first Aboriginal art-related exhibition in 1988 with Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia and in 2002 with The Native Born, which featured paintings and sculptures from Arnhem Land. “We (Asia Society) want to be part of this new turn in museums and art history that essentially decolonizes and re-centers intellectual leadership,” Beth Citron, the Asia Society’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Asian and Asian Diaspora Art, explains. “You (will) see work that appears to our eyes like mural American abstraction; you see work that’s conceptual. We think of all of the works in the exhibition as essentially as conceptual maps of their world.”
The exhibition comprises artwork made by Yolŋu artists of the past and present, including many who are garnering acclaim for their art and are represented by leading contemporary galleries. “They’re works that in Australia are the kind of undisputed masterpieces by the leading, innovative, important artists,” Skerritt says. Their barks tell modern and traditional stories; some, like Marawili, explore iconic symbols like the Statue of Liberty, while other artists choose miny’tji (sacred clan design) subjects.w
A shining example is seen in Milŋiyawuy (Milky Way) (2019) by Naminapu Maymuru-White. A well-known and respected artist—she was recently featured in the 2024 Biennale Arte—Maymuru-White is also a senior Yolŋu elder and is the first woman taught sacred clan designs. Although muted in color, this miny’tji is a scattering of white four-pointed stars that shine against a pattern of irregularly lined grey and black stripes.
Maymuru-White achieved this scene through a crosshatched painting technique of applying black natural pigment and layers of white ocre with a marwat or brush of human hair onto a stretch of flattened eucalyptus bark. This composition depicts the Milŋiyawuy or Milky Way, believed by the Maŋgalili—the artist’s ancestral clan—as a heaven of sorts where the souls of the dead reside. The viewer sees the sky (stars) and the land (stripes) of Blue Mud Bay, located in the Yolŋu’s ancestral home. The artwork tells the story of how two men led the Maŋgalili to their homeland, but upon their return, the duo met their fates and drowned in the Bay, and their spirits formed into the Milŋiyawuy.
According to Maymuru-White, each star represents a soul from the past, present, and future. And upon closer inspection of Maḏayin, one could argue that all of the artwork in the show does the same. They explore the past and present and possibly hint at a future where the art industry gives a more prominent voice to those from all over the world.
