Exhibition Details
Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala presents a watershed moment in global art history, sharing with the American public a history of Aboriginal Australian bark painting curated and narrated by the Yolŋu people inhabiting northeastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Additional Details
For millennia, Yolŋu have painted their sacred clan designs on their bodies and ceremonial objects. These designs—called miny’tji—are not merely decorative: they are the patterns of the ancestral land itself. Yolŋu people describe them as maḏayin: a term that encompasses both the sacred and the beautiful.
Location
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)
New York, NY 10021
Image: Detail from Yäma Munuŋgirritj, born ca. 1920–1987, Yarrwiḏi-Gumatj clan. Gurruŋawuy, 1961. / courtesy of Asia Society