Made it finally to what I'd call the top show of 2024 if I were into making that sort of list, "
Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala," at Asia Society. It's rare enough to see Aboriginal art in New York, but this exhibition is epic. More importantly, it's curated by Yolngu who have structured it along songline and clan lines to give guests a sense of the enduring cosmology of the world of which they, each from a lineage entitled to depict some things and not others, are the chroniclers and custodians.
On a first visit I missed all that, taken just by the
bir'yun, the "shimmer," I've read (and taught) about, of spectacular work after spectacular work. I'll find a way to go back. (For those not in New York, there's a tremendous
online version.) I would go back even without all that, just for this 1942 bark painting by Mawunbuy Munungur, “
Djan’kawu Däwu/Djan’kawu Sisters Story.”
On a first visit I missed all that, taken just by the bir'yun, the "shimmer," I've read (and taught) about, of spectacular work after spectacular work. I'll find a way to go back. (For those not in New York, there's a tremendous online version.) I would go back even without all that, just for this 1942 bark painting by Mawunbuy Munungur, “Djan’kawu Däwu/Djan’kawu Sisters Story.”
