1When in August 2020 I received an invitation to participate in a forthcoming event on “Religious heritage in public museums”, the central theme of the workshop was very much on my mind and resonated in serendipitous ways with rather profound practical questions with which I was grappling at the time. As part of a broader research project, I had recently started working on an exhibition of ‘old paintings’ from Arnhem Land, a creative experiment in remote co-curatorship that was due to open, amidst much uncertainty, ten months later at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (MQB-JC), in Paris. Creatively borne out of the pandemic situation, the exhibition was conceived as a formal collaboration between the museum in Paris and the Milingimbi Art and Culture centre (thereafter, the Art Centre), the local organisation representing the ‘source community’. The selection of 26 bark paintings and sculptures agreed upon by the descendants of the artists, was drawn from a historical collection which was assembled sixty years earlier in Milingimbi by Karel Kupka (1918-1993), an anthropologist and collector driven by a personal artistic quest (Kupka 1962; McMillan 2005; Kaufmann & McMillan 2009). Made with the master-painters of the former mission settlement, the fathers and uncles of today’s senior women and men, the Milingimbi collection of some 122 artworks is of great significance and value to the community (De Largy Healy 2010). The exhibition was presented at the MQB-JC in the Atelier Martine Aublet from 22 June to 26 September 2021.
- 1 The prefiguration project, “CARTOCOLL. Cartographie d’une collection : les peintures sur écorce de (...)
- 2 The exhibition was scheduled as part of Osez l’Australie ! (‘Australia Now!’), an Australian cultur (...)
2The exhibition Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi. Waterscapes from Northern Australia originated as an anthropological research project on bark paintings, the transmission of environmental memory, and attachments to place.1 International travel restrictions and cultural diplomacy provided the unexpected – and accelerated – possibility to translate this research project into an exhibition.2
- 3 My work mostly consisted of offering anthropological insights to explain the significance of each Y (...)
3Shaped by the running theme of water, the exhibition progressively took form through a collection of stories about the works shared by senior knowledge-holders, men and women who have inherited the rights ‘to speak for’ the paintings, and who, in many cases, pursue this artistic tradition today. Two respected artists and elders, from both Yolŋu moieties, were appointed by the Art Centre’s board of directors to make up the curatorial team, with Nicolas Garnier and myself, in order to represent the painters’ descendants’ perspectives more broadly. They were Ruth Nalmakarra Garrawura, of the Liyagawumirr clan, from the Dhuwa moiety, renowned weaver, painter, and art worker, and Joe Dhämanydji, of the Gupapuyŋu clan, from the Yirritja moiety, great artist and ceremonial leader. My own position, as a French-Australian researcher-curator with long-standing relationships in the Yolŋu community, afforded me a unique, deeply rewarding, and at times challenging perspective on the processes at play. While I was contracted by the museum on this project, I saw it as my role to ensure that the Yolŋu values and agency transpired throughout the making of the exhibition.3
Figure 1. Poster of the Guḻarri Exhibition, 2021
The poster features the painting Birrkuḏa (Honeybee), made by Tom Djäwa, Gupapuyŋu (Yirritja moiety), collected by Karel Kupka in 1963.
© Musée du quai Branly & Milingimbi Art and Culture centre
4With increasingly slim prospects of the Australian borders reopening in time for face-to-face consultations to take place in Paris or Milingimbi, the issue of how to convey in absentia the all-encompassing and deeply spiritual artworld of the Yolŋu to the French public became a central concern to me. Having long been engaged in Yolŋu-led research on collections and museum collaborations in Arnhem Land, including in the form of art exhibitions and digital repatriation projects, I was particularly aware of the “curatorial responsibility” which arises out of the “nexus of interests” between a community and a public museum (Harrison 2013: 5). Beyond the obvious ethical qualms over the conditions of remote collaboration, the question of how to translate the meanings and values of ancestral imagery in appropriate terms framed many of our early thoughts. Unsurprisingly, it rapidly transpired from the preliminary community consultations undertaken by the Art Centre that the paintings under consideration, like religious objects, possessed a set of qualities and attributes of spiritual, moral and jural natures, that required special curatorial attention, wording, and care.
- 4 See, for example, the seminal museum policy framework Previous possessions, new obligations: Polici (...)
5The posture of “respect” towards religious objects, identified by Crispin Paine (2013) in post-colonial museum settings, carries both theoretical and practical implications that are relevant in relation to Australian Aboriginal museum collections. When applied to museum artefacts, Paine writes, respect is a “highly elusive concept”, most usefully defined as the need “to pay attention to, in a culturally appropriate way” (Paine 2013: 57). Demonstrated through a series of practices around material collections (storing, handling, accessing, displaying, discoursing on) and upheld by growing numbers of national and international policy frameworks, the respect shown by museum practitioners to other people’s religious objects, he concludes, “is really directed towards the object’s original and present-day stakeholders and to our relationship to them” (Paine 2013: 62). In the Australian post-colonial context, where museum collaborations with Indigenous communities have gradually become the norm since the 1990s, this conclusion is particularly relevant.4 Importantly, for many Yolŋu engaged in the museum sector, such as the members of the Milingimbi curatorial team, this relationship and the show of respect extends back as a moral responsibility to their ancestors and towards the objects themselves. Throughout this article, I use the compelling quality of depth to translate my understanding of the nature of the connections revealed in the paintings. My use of the adjective “deep” echoes the recent emergence of this term as a temporal marker in archaeology, anthropology, history, and environmental studies, and its success in qualifying time scales in Aboriginal Australia where one now speaks of “deep history” and “deep time” (McGrath & Jebb 2015; Griffiths 2018). In the Australian context, “deep” means 70,000 years old occupation histories, environmental knowledge that goes back thousands of generations, and art traditions that have evolved over centuries on rock, skin, sand, bark and more recently on a range of introduced media. “Deep” characterises stories that tell of rising sea levels during the late Pleistocene, celestial motions in the sky, and the eruption of long dead volcanos. In Yolŋu arts, “deep” evokes the sense of the sacred, the invisible foundations made present through the aesthetic qualities of a painting, or the resonance of a power-name in a song. These deep connections are what ground people, places, and ancestors together across time and space.
- 5 To name some of the major museum exhibitions and accompanying scholarly catalogues featuring histor (...)
- 6 I borrow the term “spirals” from a collective of Yolŋu and non-Aboriginal authors who recently publ (...)
6Thinking of Aboriginal bark paintings as ‘religious objects’ provides a stimulating analytical framework to reflect on some of the shared responsibilities at stake in exhibiting Yolŋu historical collections in museums today. My analysis draws on my two decades of ethnographic research undertaken in northeast Arnhem Land with ceremonial leaders, artists, and museum workers, highlighting some of these issues and illustrating how, through formal collaborations entered into by different parties, paintings become re-embedded in meaningful relations to people, places, ancestors, and narratives. After a discussion of the ambiguous status of bark paintings, through a brief history of this art movement in Milingimbi, I return to moral responsibility in curatorship to show how the idea has been taken up by Yolŋu and museums in Australia with regards to their historical or ‘legacy’ collections. I suggest that Yolŋu art centres’ long-term engagement with museums and cumulative experience in curation through their active participation in dozens of exhibitions of old and new barks in Australia and overseas5 has resulted in a broader appreciation of the spiralling depth6 of Arnhem Land’s art historical collections. Rather than being a one-way movement from the centres (the museums) to the periphery (the source communities), built solely upon sentiments of historical redress and post-colonial moral intent, restitution practices in north-east Arnhem Land, of which exhibitions are arguably a singular form, can be seen as Yolŋu-led ‘two-way’ processes, of sharing in and sharing out, which museums are invited to partake in and benefit from. Building on my recent experience in the co-curation of the Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi exhibition, this moral turn and its scenographic implications are explored in the final part of the article.
- 7 An exhaustive bibliography of publications dealing with the ancestral aspects of Australian Indigen (...)
7The idea of apprehending Aboriginal paintings as ‘religious objects’ is, of course, not new, and indeed represents an enduring trope in the study of Australian Indigenous arts including in its most contemporary forms. The sacred/ancestral/dreamtime/ritual foundations of Aboriginal art have long been the subject of learned commentary by anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, and curators and they hold a central place in the discourse that has become institutionalised in museum and art galleries in Australia and elsewhere, as well as on the international art and tourist markets.7
8Closely following missionary settlement during the 1920s and the arrival of the first collectors and anthropologists in the East Arnhem region, bark paintings have found their way into some of the most prestigious museum collections. “Becoming art” (Morphy 2007) in complex and art-historically thick movements that extend vibrantly to this day, historical works are held in major institutions in Australia, Europe, and the United States. I will not dwell here on the lengthy disciplinary debates about whether bark paintings (and non-Western material culture more widely) should be regarded as art objects deserving of aesthetic appraisal or as artefacts of mere ethnographic interest (but see Coote & Shelton 1992; Myers 1998; Kaufman 2005; Morphy 1996, 2007). Karel Kupka (1957, 1964, 1972) himself was a relentless advocate for the recognition of the artists’ individual talents and creativity. The fact that in recent decades Yolŋu bark paintings have been displayed in cutting-edge contemporary art spaces as well as in post-colonial ethnographic museums speaks for itself. That some of today’s most celebrated contemporary Australian artists such as Djambawa Marawili, Gunybi Ganambarr, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili or John Mawurndjul are Arnhem Land bark painters further blurs the boundaries between these binary categories.
- 8 Dr. Joe Neparrŋa Gumbula (1954-2015) was a ceremonial leader (liyaŋärramirri), university lecturer, (...)
9‘Historical collections’ in the Yolŋu context refers to museum collections and anthropological archives dating from the mission era. Broadly spanning from the 1920s to the 1960s, the mission era predates the federal policy of Aboriginal self-determination and the creation of government structures which established the making of “high Aboriginal art” and the modern arts industry in Australia (Myers 2002). Yolŋu expert and scholar Joe Neparrŋa Gumbula, who studied and documented the major museum collections and ethnographic archives from the East Arnhem region, labelled these “Legacy collections” (Hamby & Gumbula 2015: 189–190).8 Throughout his academic career researching these collections dispersed in several countries, his use of the English term ‘legacy’, rather than the more common and institutionalised appellation ‘heritage’ is telling. The Cambridge Dictionary offers a two-fold definition of ‘legacy’: 1) money or property that you receive from someone after they die; 2) something that is a part of your history or that remains from an earlier time. This definition calls attention to two significant aspects of the term and explains its appeal in the Yolŋu context: it emphasises social relatedness (a legacy is attributed by someone specific, in this case, members of the ascending generation within the Yolŋu kinship system or gurruṯu); and it stresses the enduring nature of what is endowed (the collections actively remain, they are integral to people’s lives today).
- 9 While since the 1980s some of the most well-known contemporary artists have been women (see for ins (...)
10Historical or legacy collections comprise paintings, sculptures, and objects made by the fathers, maternal uncles, grandfathers, and other known male relatives of today’s Yolŋu clan leaders.9 Their makers belonged to the first generation of ceremonial leaders to join the three missionary settlements which were established throughout the region – Milingimbi 1923; Yirrkala 1935; and Galiwin’ku 1942 – and to paint for visiting anthropologists and museum collectors on a scale never experienced before. Encouraged by individual missionaries who set up shop and international sale circuits, this period of artistic effervescence reached a “golden age” during the 1950s and 1960s (Mundine 1996: 69), with the creative transposition of sacred ritual expressions into the public domain, as permanent, portable, and exchangeable artefacts, and the experimentation with new techniques and representational forms.
11Following the major changes that transformed their modes of life in less than three decades, from the centralisation of previously dispersed clan groups to the introduction of new regimes of value such as Christianity, many Milingimbi leaders such as Tom Djäwa (1905-1980), Johnny Dayngangan (c. 1892-1959) or Dawidi (1921-1970) regarded the emergence of an international demand for their paintings as an opportunity to engage in cross-cultural transactions, for economic and pedagogical as well as political purposes. From the beginning of mission collecting, the painters themselves have been important exegetes of their works for the outside world, providing mythical and other narratives to the collectors in order to educate them about the power and beauty of the ancestral Law (rom) imaged in their designs, as well as the system of rights in which they partook. Interviewed in Milingimbi in 2009, Colin Dhämarrandji, an old man himself, thus remembered the exchanges between Karel Kupka and his father and other past leaders in terms of an asymmetrical teaching relationship.
- 10 This quote was reproduced at the end of the exhibition in a small space dedicated to Karel Kupka, w (...)
Karel Kupka, he studied the arts with the old men Dhuwa and Yirritja. They helped each other like that. The old men told him the stories of the paintings, where they came from, whose Dreamings they were, what the maḏayin was about. Kupka didn’t know anything so they explained so that he could understand the meaning of the Dreamings. They helped him, told him stories, who they belonged to. (Colin Dhämarrandji 2009, cited in De Largy Healy 2010: 208). 10
- 11 The term “dreaming”, which is widely used in Australian anthropology and Aboriginal English across (...)
Although not universal among Yolŋu-matha speakers, the use of the English term Dreaming is now quite frequent when speaking with balanda (non-Indigenous people). It refers to a loose category of sacred things, such as ancestral beings and lands, ceremonial songs, sacred designs etc. It is often used interchangeably with the term maḏayin, defined in the CDU Yolŋu-matha dictionary as ‘sacred, secret, holy, taboo, sacred object(s), an important sacred ceremony’.11
- 12 The Yirrkala bark petitions (1963), an iconic piece of Aboriginal political art which hang in the F (...)
12In addition to procuring rations and later monetary revenue, painting as a mission activity notably provided a locus for the transmission and recording of deep ceremonial knowledge in the new settlement context. As journeys to distant sites of significance on various clan estates became fewer and farther between, many of today’s adult Milingimbi residents recall watching their relatives paint for the outsiders, often humming the ceremonial songs associated with the places and ancestral beings depicted. This knowledge of a religious nature from a ‘long time ago’ (bamanpuy) is mediated in the designs themselves, as well as in the documentary records produced alongside these historical collections by missionaries, anthropologists, and other early collectors. In establishing connections between the spiritual and the physical dimensions of the Yolŋu world, by interlocking the ancestral, the social, and the jural domains in painted form, their narratives became central to conveying the various clans’ relations to their land and water estates. In this region, as would later become common in other parts of Australia following the Native Title Act (1993), paintings have been likened to ancestral title deeds to lands and have been presented as such as evidence in Yolŋu land claims since the 1960s.12
13A wealth of recent studies in Australia and elsewhere (Byrne et. al 2011; Gibson 2020a; Harrison et al. 2013; Peers & Brown 2003; Thomas 1991) have shed light on the myriad ways in which Indigenous groups and individuals have been active agents both in the making of ethnographic collections and, to some extent, of their own museum representations. Indigenous researchers such as Shaun Angeles Penangke (Kungarakany/Arrernte) have acknowledged their ancestors’ “vision and foresight to record […] for the benefit of their future generations” (Angeles 2016); or in Paul Tapsell’s (Māori /Ngāti Whakaue and Ngāti Raukawa) words, “the foresight of agency that elders have quietly carried when engaging, or not engaging with museums” (Tapsell 2003: 244). From Joe Gumbula’s perspective, the legacy collections which he researched indeed materialised the transformation of ancestral knowledge from the past to the present. Gumbula regarded paintings as evidence of the authority and agency of the old people, the first to intentionally ‘present themselves to the public’. While historical paintings are cherished as tangible expressions of ancestral presences and powers, individual barks are also seen as learned interpretations of Rom, the ancestral Law, by past ceremonial leaders who are remembered for the breadth of their ritual knowledge and artistry. These material traces provide invaluable sources of ancestral knowledge, a knowledge that was specifically imparted for the record by the artists themselves. As such, legacy collections are seen less to be the result of colonial dispossession than of a deliberate effort to record and preserve important dimensions of their clans’ culture. The reception of their ‘message’ by the appropriate relatives of the following generations is a strong drive for the repatriation and curation of digital collections on local archives (Wanambi & Marika 2016: 84; De Largy Healy 2022a; Gibson 2020b).
Through their rich history of engagement with various anthropologists and collectors such as Karel Kupka, Yolŋu have long come to envisage museums as “sites of persuasion” which, as Howard Morphy has described, could be used “to get their version of history and their regime of value acknowledged and disseminated to wider audiences” (2006: 471–472). These active forms of participation carry specific rules of engagement with the collections as I will now illustrate.
14Thinking of bark paintings as a kind of religious object is useful in grasping the nature and practical implications of the ‘respect’ they command in post-colonial museum settings. While bark paintings are not ritual objects per se, and thus were not normally produced for use in ceremonial contexts, prior to the development of the painting movement in Arnhem Land, they could sometimes be created to reveal sacred patterns to initiands during certain ritual sequences. Barks could also be utilised as draft surfaces to practice with particularly potent designs before applying them on the body or on the most powerful and secret ritual objects called raŋga (bones). Karel Kupka noted this latter usage of barks which he likened to that of an artist’s sketch book. During his fieldwork in Milingimbi in 1963, Kupka documented the case of a young painter named Badaltja, of the Wangurri clan, who sketched several studies of a raŋga ritual object on paper so that his elders could choose the appropriate model for a ceremony that was to take place in his absence (1972: 73, fig.26). Prior to the introduction of paper sheets, bark could arguably have been utilised for this purpose. While paintings of this restricted nature are rare in museum collections, as the models would have been destroyed after the completion of the actual ritual object, it is worth mentioning the case of another known example collected by Karel Kupka. This elongated triangular bark, now part of the collection of the musée d’ethnographie de Genève, stands out specifically because of its uncommon shape. Resembling a ceremonial object more than a regular bark panel, it indeed calls for special consideration in its exhibition requirements (De Largy Healy 2022b: 251–252).
- 13 For more on the use of the Knowledge Constitution model to determine access in the academy, see Cor (...)
15Other than these rare instances, historical bark paintings were usually made to be sold at the mission store and are nowadays generally considered to be ‘outside’ (warraŋul) or public (garma) works. These terms are also glossed in Yolŋu English as ‘open’, despite the sacred and highly valued nature of the painted content. Interestingly, though, these ‘outside’ bark paintings can temporarily change status over time, acquiring an ‘inside’ (djinaga), or ‘restricted’ (dhuni), ‘closed’ status. Joe Gumbula (2010) conceived a graphic model reproducing a traffic light colour-scheme to illustrate the three Yolŋu knowledge domains: green for garma, public, open, outside; orange for dhuni, semi-restricted, accessible with cautionary measures; and red for ŋärra, restricted, secret, closed and inside.13
The movement of sacred forms from the outside to the inside and vice versa closely follows contemporary Yolŋu socioreligious dynamics (see Keen 1994). A painting formerly classified as ‘inside’, which may for instance reveal the outline of one of the clan’s restricted ritual objects, can become ‘open’ after the release of this particular design during a young boy’s initiation (dhapi) ceremony, a public event of the garma genre during which the designs are painted on the initiand’s torso, upper thighs, and shoulders (De Largy Healy 2012).
16When curating an exhibition, past and present socio-religious dynamics come to play a defining part in the selection and display of the works, and the textual information which will be made available about them. Paintings associated with recently deceased ceremonial leaders can become momentarily restricted in the context of mourning, following a local dispute or a lack of consensus between clans. Temporary restrictions on discussing particular paintings may also occur, for example, when an important ceremony associated with a powerful ancestral being is taking place in the community. A situation of this kind occurred in the first few months of the Guḻarri exhibition preparation, at a stage when we were collating information about the artworks for the purpose of labelling and preparing the wall texts: the team in Paris had to wait a couple of months for a Gunapipi ceremony held in Milingimbi to end before they received documentation about a set of paintings relating to the well-known myth of the Wagilag Sisters, the ancestral beings who established this major regional initiation, funerary, and commemorative ritual (see Berndt 1951; Caruana & Lendon 1997). The Art Centre notified us that people felt uncomfortable speaking about this ancestral narrative in contexts outside of the ceremony which was taking place at the same time. Justified on religious grounds, this delay – which ran counter to the museum’s reverse planning, with time relentlessly ticking away – was one of a number of adjustments which were necessary due the very nature of the exhibits.
- 14 Tjurunga, also known as churinga amongst collectors’ circles, are incised stone or wooden elongated (...)
17The painting I had initially flagged for the exhibition poster, itself related to the Wagilag Sisters’ story, was eventually excluded from the final selection despite having been classed as ‘open’ and available for anyone to see during a prior consultation I had undertaken on the Karel Kupka collection a decade earlier. At that moment in time however, in late 2020, there was no one in Milingimbi who had the legitimate authority to make the decision to include the piece or ‘speak for it’. In this particular instance, it was explained that the original painter had received a special mandate to paint Wititj, the ancestral serpent, belonging to his MM[B]’s group, but that this permission did not necessarily extend to his descendants. Instead, Joe Dhämanydji chose for the exhibition poster a painting of Birrkuḏa, the Ancestral Honeybee closely identified with his Gupapuyŋu clan, a bark made by his father Djäwa, for which he could confidently vouch through his own position of authority (see Figure 1). This dynamic set of rules that can afford temporary restrictions on bark paintings otherwise regarded as public is considerably different from the strict secrecy that characterises other Australian Indigenous objects such as the Central Australian tjurunga which, as a general principle, can neither be openly displayed nor universally accessed.14
- 15 The ULB workshop convenors originally proposed the following working definition: “‘Religious object (...)
- 16 Traces de rêve. Peintures sur écorce des Aborigènes d’Australie, musée d’ethnographie de Genève, ME (...)
18Rather than “representations of deities”,15 historical bark paintings are better conceived of as “figurations” (Descola 2021) of the ancestral beings themselves (waŋarr), who under various shapes (animal, human, plants, winds, and rains etc.) created the cosmos and society and instigated the Law (rom) which governs the organisation of society and the living world. The designs (miny’tji) inscribed on various surfaces result from these ancestral actions throughout the landscape, recalling places where they shaped a river, dug a waterhole, or bled an ochre pit, where they interacted with other beings and elements, deposited objects, or delineated linguistic boundaries. The rapprochement between bark paintings and ancestral remains is enlightening in this respect. Yolŋu scholar Joe Gumbula (2010: 9) drew a comparison between paintings and bones. In his introductory essay to a bark painting exhibition catalogue which we both worked on in 2010, Gumbula explained the deep significance of this artform as follows: “Paintings are the backbone of the land and sea, the bones of the landscape and of the people. Like bones, they hold the country.”16 In his words, the designs on the paintings are ḻuku (foot, footprint) foundational: not only do they make visible the sacred connections between ancestral beings, sites throughout the region and interrelated groups of people, but they are part of these beings themselves. The ḻuku miny’tji are the geometrical scars the ancestral beings wore on their bodies after being burnt on a particular shore, the elongated marks appearing on their skin as they stepped out of a named watercourse dripping with weeds, the striped patterns left on their limbs by the froth coming in with the tide at a specific beach. These designs ‘hold’ the country in that they signify and reveal the ‘inside’ and everlasting foundations of each place.
19Howard Morphy, who has worked in northeast Arnhem Land for over half a century, has shown that the relationship between the visible (the landscape features, the skin) and the invisible (the ancestral, the bone) is a central trope of Yolŋu art. In painting, as in other ritual expressions such as dance and song, “events that happened in the ancestral past are made part of the present, simultaneously reflecting and creating an ancestral presence in the world” (Morphy 2007: 109). Raymattja Marika, a renowned educator and translator from Yirrkala, described this revelatory process beautifully, comparing painting, as a practice and activity, to meditation:
When old people paint, it is as if they are meditating; it is not just a man painting a design, but the design is a real meaningful and alive totem, which somehow communicates with the painter. When a person does a painting, it actually increases their knowledge of Yolŋu law. There is a communication going on (Marika 2008: 7).
Painting, whether in ceremonial context or on barks, conveys the nature of the world as the artists see it, or more accurately, as they experience it, as an animated, sentient landscape. Beyond a religious sentiment of contemplation, this quote suggests that painting and seeing through art is akin an active participation in the world. When Joe Dhämanydji speaks of his father’s Birrkuḏa painting mentioned above, these different modes of engagement come to light. Birrkuḏa is a big name (yindi yaku) of the Gupapuyŋu clan’s ancestral Honeybee. Grounded in one of the clan’s named freshwater estates, the story Dhämanydji recorded for the exhibition describes the hive in some detail, with the different states of honey it contains and the movements of the bees to and from various plants and locations. It conveys simultaneously the perspectives of the ancestral Bee, who during its journey at sea encounters an ancestral Whale being, of the swarm of insects’ behaviour and flight across various habitats, and of the Gupapuyŋu gatherers in search for honey. The diamond pattern (miny’tji) visible on the oblong-shaped hive, which also adorns the shells of four small long-neck turtles depicted in the freshwater on either side of this central figure, is Gupapuyŋu honey. Part of the broader cultural complex (Fijn 2014) of what Rose (2005) has coined an “indigenous philosophical ecology”, the same honey motif appears on this clan’s ritual objects and is painted on the bodies of Gupapuyŋu men during life-cycle ceremonies such as initiations and funerals. It is assimilated to this clan’s knowledge and to what I would call its deep ecology.
20Each clan like the Gupapuyŋu owns a unique set of designs (but also a dialect, sacred names, chanted song-spirals, ceremonies, dances, and ritual objects) pertaining to the ancestral events which happened on their land and sea countries, and which continue to permeate all its life forms. Belonging to the madayin class, deemed to possess great power and beauty, the paintings are part of a “sacred endowment” from the ancestors (Williams 1986: 1-36). They are powerful images that may still be released guardedly in ceremonial settings and in the contemporary art practices, however their circulation and use are determined by relations of kinship (gurruṯu) and rules of Law (rom). Interpretative responsibilities are managed and transmitted within the various clan groups; as Morphy (2007: 149) suggests, these principles form the basis of Yolŋu art connoisseurship in the region:
Paintings form a complex framework of interlocking genealogies to which people can relate on the basis of kinship and mythical connections. The Yolŋu “art historian” is able to place paintings on the basis of their form in relation to this grid of connectivity and to state precisely who the painting belongs to, what his or her own relationship to it is, which country it belongs to and which ancestral track.
- 17 De Largy Healy 2017 shows how gurruṯu determines the ways in which ethnographic film records become (...)
21Legacy collections find their place back into this ‘grid of connectivity’ of ancestral reach, their return to their community of origin reinforcing social connections between past, present, and future generations.17 The paintings and the ‘big’ stories they hold, and the profound knowledge of Yolŋu land and sea countries they carry, are owned, cared for, and controlled by related clan groups across the region. Differential rights and responsibilities in this ancestral heritage are transmitted following prescribed lines (or spirals) of kinship (gurruṯu) that connect paintings to specific sets of relatives, ancestral and spirit beings, fresh and saltwater countries, songs, and bodies of sacra.
The enduring significance of this web of relatedness in people’s lives explains why research and other collaborations on Yolŋu historical collections, whether material or digital, like elsewhere in Indigenous Australia (Carty 2015; Myers 2014; Barwick, Green & Vaarzon-Morel 2020), invariably begin with a formal identification process: is a work of Dhuwa or Yirritja moiety, which clan does it belong to, who are its rightful owners at present? Indeed, shortly after an agreement was reached over the terms of the Guḻarri exhibition, the Milingimbi Art Centre’s first critical initiative and responsibility was to conduct a series of consultation sessions with different clan groups within the community (see Figure 2). Over a period of several weeks, the Centre’s staff invited families to view and comment on a pre-selection of paintings and sculptures in order to establish the final list of works. Two photographs showing groups of people seated and bent over the printed reproductions of the artworks spread out on the Art Centre floor, were included on the first panel in the exhibition space, to inform the public about local protocols and research methodology. At the end of the process, the consulted families settled on a selection of 26 works, further organised in eight clan bundles.
Figure 2. Clan consultation at the Art Centre
© Milingimbi Art and Culture Centre, 2020
- 18 Following the standard kinship notation system: M mother, B brother, Z sister, D daughter, c male o (...)
22Yolŋu viewers work out their own relationship to a painting or an object according to kinship (gurruṯu). They will relate the most to works that are from their own clan, their Mother’s clan (ŋäṉḏi M[B]) or Grand-mother’s clan (märi MM[B]).18 This set of people, respectively of the opposite and of the same moiety, will have the highest claim over particular designs and the authority to make decisions with regards to their public release in exhibitions and other forms. Senior men and women from these groups, people recognised as knowledgeable, will be further consulted about the discourse that should be attached to the exhibited works, and the level of information that can be shared about their meaning. When a person is unable to ‘speak for’ a painting because they are not closely related to the work, or if they feel they are not senior enough to make decisions, they will usually consult with the relevant people in the community to fill in this information. Ideally, these are descendants of the same patrilineal land-owning group (wäŋa wataŋu) and senior members of their ‘child’ group (M[B] / [Z]c), of the opposite moiety, who act as managers (djuŋgaya) for their Mothers. In a context where ‘gurruṯu (kinship) is everywhere’ as one often hears, museum consultation work is necessarily a lengthy and complex procedure with high ethical stakes. Factoring in this consultation time is an essential requirement to warrant the appropriateness of the collaboration process on Yolŋu terms.
23Nowadays in Australia, most if not all public exhibitions of Indigenous art are made in collaboration with members of the concerned source communities (Pickering 2019). The recognition of ‘the rights of communities to dispose of their sacred objects or to recontextualise them according to spiritual conceptions’, as it was formulated by the workshop convenors, has entrenched the voice of the source communities in the museum and led to ‘the re-actualisation of spiritual meanings and moral values of the objects’. This re-actualisation runs at odds with the tendency of museums to freeze objects in the past, a process Dan Hicks (2020) has recently coined “necrography” or “death writing”. Increasingly, in recent decades, the participation of Indigenous researchers, curators, and knowledge holders in the museum sector has raised awareness of the epistemological subtleties and ethical imperatives of exhibiting sacred Aboriginal art in public places. Beyond the decolonising of museums, Indigenous curators such as Stephen Gilchrist (Yamatji) are calling for their indigenisation through novel forms of curation where “the objects become re-animated with an unending ancestral signification of the past, gesturing emphatically towards the future” (Gilchrist 2021: 24). In practical terms, this re-animation proceeds from the re-establishment of the objects’ “authentic cultural biography” (ibid.), of which the contemporary identification process referred to above is both a prerequisite and cornerstone.
The need to reconnect works with their makers, proper names, and creation stories was expressed with some urgency by Joe Dhämanydji in the Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi exhibition:
Many of my father’s and other old people’s paintings have been kept in the museum for a long, long time. We need to find these paintings because many have been mixed up with different names. I worry if we don’t put the right name and clan, the connections between the people and stories won’t make sense in the future (Dhämanydji 2021).
The restoration of their full identity, the re-naming of paintings and objects with vernacular terms and titles, and their attribution to specific people and lands is part of the respect due to these objects. Identification and reintegration in gurruṯu (kinship) enables the works to feed back into artistic creativity (De Largy Healy 2022a) and into ceremonial performance (De Largy Healy 2011b). It was precisely in terms of ‘respect’ that Joe Gumbula justified the importance of these naming processes in his museum research.
- 19 The status of human remains held in museum collections is outside the scope of this paper. Research (...)
- 20 In 1988, the Mulka museum, an air-conditioned, high standard local museum facility, opened in the B (...)
Yolŋu ceremonial leaders and artists have instigated a range of measures to reconnect with their legacy collections, collaborating with museums in Australia and elsewhere on exhibitions, curatorial and documentary projects, and organising their digital repatriation in community archives, under various conditions of access and use. To my knowledge, there have not been any claims emanating from a Yolŋu community or collective for the physical repatriation of historical collections of bark painting from museums.19 Yolŋu are often grateful for the conservation conditions in museums, which can only be replicated locally at relatively high cost.20 When interviewed on a national radio about exhibition collaborations with European museums, Ruth Nalmakarra Garrawura, Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi co-curator, unequivocally insisted on the importance of bringing the old collections out of storage rooms so that they can in a way fulfil their purpose, be seen and spoken about.
That collection that was there a long time, it’s better that these artworks are now in the open area […]. We were happy to see all those artworks and at the same time we were sad because they were in that area, in the storeroom for many years. And we felt that, it is better to have an exhibition. We will have an exhibition and carry on; we can do it and we can do it from here […] (Garrawura 2021).
- 21 See, for instance, Art from Milingimbi. Taking memories back, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (...)
24Institutional collaborations have proven an effective means to publicly acknowledge Yolŋu authority over their sacred objects and paintings in museum collections and in recent exhibitions.21 As famed Yolŋu artist and ceremonial leader Djambawa Marawili (2021: 19) recently stated in his foreword to an exhibition of historical bark paintings catalogue, “We are the archaeologists and anthropologists”, thereby firmly asserting the expertise of the current Indigenous knowledge-holders.
- 22 At the time, the musée du quai Branly declined the invitation to participate in the event. In addit (...)
The recognition of this expertise and of ongoing ownership rights over their cultural heritage was the driving force behind the historic Makarrata peace-making event, which was organised in Milingimbi in 2016, with representatives of some thirty institutions holding legacy collections (Hamby & Allen 2016, 2020; Voirol 2019).22 Bringing the museums onto their own Yolŋu ceremonial ground, as participants in a conflict resolution ritual to renegotiate responsibilities of custodianship over the collections, was a powerful way of transforming relations and acknowledging the shared value of these materials. At the end of the four-day event, which alternated formal presentations, hunting, and other collective activities as well as ceremonial performances on the makarrata ground, the participants drafted the Makarrata Resolution, a document intended to set a blueprint for future museum collaborations in Arnhem Land and Aboriginal Australia more widely.
The Makarrata has planted a seed of mutual hope for the establishment and strengthening of our relationships as joint custodians of these precious things. We are committed to continue this dialogue and, through the deep listening that has begun, work towards important and shared outcomes. It is with mutual trust, integrity, and responsibility that we resolve to commit to this common future, acknowledging the need for a focused process respectful of the need for unhurried time.23
- 24 In 2019, the Art Centre’s board of directors developed and released “Guidelines for collaboration. (...)
25The Makarrata resolution established new terms and standards for museum collaborations in Milingimbi.24 Notably, the wording of the resolution drew on the idea of ‘unhurried time’ as mandatory for engaging in meaningful working relations between museums and communities. ‘Deep listening’ was instituted as another core principle of respectful collaborations, to grasp the significance of the artworks in Yolŋu lives and to devise appropriate ways of displaying them in museum settings. Because paintings are dhawumirr, pregnant with stories, Yolŋu voices and narratives (dhawu) must be heard and made to ‘come up’ with the exhibits. Nalmakarra Garrawura thus conceived of museum collaborations as a way of sharing in and sharing out the stories, within and outside of the community (see Figure 3).
We are happy when somebody from there calls us here and we talk, yo. So, looks like we are sharing, we are sharing those collections and artworks. Sharing and talking about it. Like making us feel manymak, good, better. Bringing our spirit and life back and sharing it to the other different people […]. Like exhibitions, because before it didn’t happen like that. Today it’s starting to come up, all this mala, collections mala, dhawu mala, story. Because it was there, only little dhawu, only little story in it. But we want to make it a bigger and a louder for everybody to know and to learn (Garrawura 2021).
26If we accept Widlok’s (2013) basic definition of sharing as allowing others to access what is valued, the social implications of Yolŋu concepts of sharing are far-reaching and call for new forms of responsibility. Nalmakarra’s commitment to sharing the “spirit” of the paintings, by making their stories known, lies at the heart of Yolŋu experiments in curation and museology.
Figure 3a. Gapu Milminydjarrk ga Wayanaka, Sacred waterholes and oysters, 1963
Painting attributed to Djunmal, of the Liyagawumirr clan (Dhuwa moiety), that was collected by Karel Kupka in 1963. Formerly untitled, it was named by the Yolŋu curators [photography 72.1964.9.12].
© Musée du quai Branly (MQB-JC), 1963
Figure 3b. Gapu Milminydjarrk ga Wayanaka, Sacred waterholes and oysters, 2002
Painting by Susan Yirrawurr, of the Liyagawumirr clan (Dhuwa moiety), and Nalmakarra’s granddaughter (gutharra or Daughter’s child), that is a contemporary interpretation of the same story.
© Milingimbi Art and Culture centre, 2022
27In the final part of this article, I review some of the curatorial choices that were made in the Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi. Waterscapes from Northern Australia exhibition to translate Yolŋu forms of attachment to their aquatic territories and sense of inter-relatedness. Owing to the global pandemic context in 2020-2021, our capacity to engage in deep listening at the Art Centre, around a campfire or during a visit to a particular site, was obviously limited. The question of how to conceive an exhibition in these circumstances that would reveal the bark paintings’ multiple entanglements diachronically, both from the perspective of their makers and of their descendants and, to some extent, of Karel Kupka, their collector, offered a stimulating museological challenge.25 Paradoxically, this unfavourable context resulted in an innovative experiment in remote co-curatorship which, out of necessity at first, progressively evolved around the stories which were told, transcribed, and translated in Milingimbi and sent to Paris as textual documents. Like poetic artworks themselves rather than mere informative labels, these stories were designed to feature alongside the paintings and not subordinated to them. In order to understand the role of wor(l)ding agencies in the exhibition, it is useful to return to how the project was initially formulated through the prism of environmental memory.
- 26 Our submission to the Labex Les Passés dans le Présent responded to the first theme of the call, “M (...)
- 27 The LoC programme is a pilot ‘two-way’ educative initiative ran by local schools and ranger groups (...)
28When the idea of a new research project on the Karel Kupka collection arose in late 2019 around a seed funding opportunity,26 I began informal discussions with Michael Mungula, a senior artist and Gupapuyŋu ceremonial singer with whom I have worked closely for two decades. In 2009, he had already facilitated a series of consultation sessions around printed and digital copies of the Parisian Kupka collection I had brought back to the island for the first time (De Largy Healy 2010). Now part of the Milingimbi Crocodile Island rangers, responsible for the junior rangers’ group, Mungula was interested in the cartographic premises of the ‘Cartocoll project’, which considered bark paintings as repositories of deep ecological knowledge about significant sites across Arnhem Land. The general idea was to travel to these places in small groups for in situ record and transmission of environmental wisdom through the paintings. Such a cultural and research activity would be envisaged as a long-term collaboration between the museum, the Art Centre, and the rangers through the Learning on Country programme (LoC programme).27
When Nicolas Garnier and I had the fortuitous opportunity six months later to turn this research project into an exhibition proposal, we were immediately caught in a different temporality to comply with the museum’s production calendar. In addition to the exhibition synopsis, I was given only a few days to include an indicative list of works and a working title for our proposal. We made clear, however, that this pre-proposal, if approved by the museum, would need to be put together in close collaboration with the Art Centre in Milingimbi. Prior to entering a formal agreement with our partner institution several weeks later, I had to make two preliminary decisions: delineating the broad theme of the exhibition and making a pre-selection of bark paintings and sculptures from the Karel Kupka collection associated with this theme. I chose water (gapu) as the main theme and some 60 objects representing different freshwater, coastal, and maritime environments.
As I was pressed for a title, I had recourse to Michael Mungula’s guidance again and, after a series of phone-calls over the following weeks, which also involved his older brother George Milaypuma, the name Guḻarri was eventually suggested as suitable. Guḻarri is the name of a riverine system which flows through the lands of several groups of the Yirritja moiety in central northeast Arnhem Land. As the freshwaters run to the sea, they continue their journey as saltwater, breaking on the shores of Milingimbi island (see Figure 4). This name was retained for its connecting properties: different lands and clan groups share ownership over portions of Guḻarri, they sing Guḻarri, they paint Guḻarri: they are Guḻarri-mirr, connected through the Guḻarri waters. While each group detains its own sets of localised toponyms related to this water as it flows through various sites in their country, the generic name Gularri is shared by all. This water also connects the mainland to the island of Milingimbi where the original artists lived and painted. Moreover, and not without consequence for a public museum context, Guḻarri is easy to pronounce and rather catchy for a French audience. The title Guḻarri: Waterscapes from Northern Australia was thus registered by the museum and inscribed as such in its exhibition program.
Figure 4. Guḻarri story by George Milaypuma
Translation by Salome Harris
Guḻarri ŋayi Yirritja gapu. Damurruŋ’ ŋayi, ga raypiny.
Guḻarri are Yirritja waters. They are saltwater, and freshwater.
Yäna dhiyak Guḻarriwa dhäwuw ga ŋorra.
This is a story about Guḻarri.
Ga dhiyak ŋarrany marŋgi.
And this is what I know.
Ganbaḻtjiŋur waṉḏin ga gapu Guḻarri waṉḏin gaaaan, dhiyal ŋayi bunan Miliway.
The Guḻarri waters travelled all the way from Ganbaḻtji to Miliway.
Ga wiripu dhuwali bäpurru Guḻarrimirr mala Bangi dhuwal Bariŋur,
And other Guḻarri clans are Bangi at Bariŋur,
ga Guyamirrilil dhuwal Warrawurrŋur
and Guyamirrilil at Warrawurrŋur
ga ŋunha bala nhawiŋur Ganalbiŋu mala,
and over there, the Ganalbiŋu people
bili gapu Guḻarri waṉḏin ŋulaŋur Ganalbiŋu
because the water ran from Ganalbiŋu [country]
ga djuḻkthurr ŋayi Ritharrŋuwal,
and passed through Ritharrŋu [country]
ga djutjtjutj bala ŋayi waṉḏiny Guḻarriny
and the Guḻarri kept going
ga ŋayathaŋal ŋayi wäŋa Bariŋur Bandji Ŋawurrmirri.
and reached the place Bariŋur Bandji Ŋawurrmirri.
Ga dhiyal ŋayi ga ŋunhili ŋayi Bandji yurrupthurrnha bala Mururrku gapu ŋayi ŋupar.
And here it travelled down from Bandji to Mururrku (Miliway), following the songline.
Ga dhiyalidhi ŋayi gapu dhawaṯthurr Mururrku Binyinmarra,
Here the water comes out, at Mururrku Binyinmarra,
Wobulukarra yolŋu Ḻaŋarraŋur. Wobulkarra gapu ŋunhi.
[of] the Wobulkarra people at Ḻaŋarra. It is Wobulkarra water there.
Ga ŋunhi Guḻarri ŋayi dhuwalidhi nhawikala Mururrku walalaŋgu warrpam’ku dhuwali Guḻarrimirri mala walalaŋ Guḻarrimirriw malawdja.
And the Guḻarri there at Mururrku is everyone’s water, all the Guḻarri people - the people who belong to Guḻarri.
Dhiyali ŋayi rrambaŋiny waṉḏin gapu ga ḏamurruŋdhinan.
The waters run together there and become salty.
Bala ŋayi ḏamurruŋ’ dhawaṯthurrdja, ḏamurruŋnha ŋayi.
Then it flows out [into the sea] as saltwater.
Bili walalanydja ŋunhi ga walalaŋ raypinybuy Guḻarri.
Because their Guḻarri is freshwater.
Dhuwali ŋunhi Guḻarripuy dhäwu dhuwalaŋuwuy.
That’s the Guḻarri story from here [from this side].
© Jessica De Largy Healy, 2021 (Courtesy of Milingimbi Art and Culture centre)
29Several months after the official collaboration had started, though, a change was requested by the Art Centre in Milingimbi as the chosen title was deemed ‘too weak’ by several people of authority in the community. Joe Dhämanydji recorded a short video (see Figure 5) statement in English to explain his decision to expand the original title to Gapu Guḻarri Yothu Yindi. Filmed in the Art Centre office, the video starts with the bold assertion “So this exhibition will be titled Gapu yothu yindi”, before pursuing, “So yothu yindi means like the two waters is divided into two, Dhuwa gapu or Yirritja, saltwater or freshwater, it’s what we call mother and child”. The addition of the concept of yothu yindi, glossed in English as mother and child, was regarded as fundamental to encompass the Dhuwa component of Yolŋu society which would have been left out if only the Yirritja name Guḻarri had been retained. This augmented title was thought to better resonate with the subject matters of the works selected which concerned both moieties and the relationships between them. Despite the late change in terms of museum production, the revised title was successfully included on all the as-yet unpublished exhibition material, either in its full form or as a subtitle.
Figure 5. Joe Dhämanydji video screen capture
© Milingimbi Art and Culture centre & musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, 2021
30The importance of incorporating Yolŋu worldviews into the actual design of the exhibition was brought to bear during another defining exchange with Dhämanydji some weeks later, when we received by email the first ‘text’ from the Art Centre. This written document, presented as Dhämanydji’s initial thoughts about water, began as follows:
We have two kinds of water, Dhuwa, and Yirritja, freshwater and saltwater, in every place. There are two kinds of saltwater, Dhuwa and Yirritja, and two kinds of freshwater, Dhuwa and Yirritja. In Dhuwa places, two bodies of saltwater might relate as mother-child. In this way, Dhuwa and Yirritja waters meet as mother-child. Waters can relate as grandparent-grandchild as well. Or you might see mother-child waters (Dhämanydji 2020).
- 28 As one of the reviewers noted, Australian Indigenous art centres are themselves premised on ideas o (...)
Recorded in the Djambarrpuyŋu dialect, transcribed, and translated into English by the Art Centre linguist, this declaration fundamentally shaped the exhibition as we came to conceive it.28 It made clear that the representation of the moiety system, Dhuwa and Yirritja, and of the relationships between the clans and various bodies of water were at the centre of Yolŋu curatorial concerns. The organisation of the artworks in sets further reinforced this concept of social relatedness: rather than grouping the works according to the different aquatic environments to which they related, an option that would have been too lengthy in view of the mounting time pressure, the consulted group of senior Yolŋu decided to group the works by clans. This was considered an efficient way to foster public understanding of the complex relationships that are represented in different bodies of water: relationships between animals, plants and other beings within a specific environment, relationships between an individual and different types of water, and relationships of clans to various aquatic territories.
As the exhibition project evolved, discussions took place during regular Zoom meetings and near daily email exchanges between the Museum teams, me, and the Art centre workers in the community. The collaboration took the form of a co-curation, a ‘co-commissariat’ in French, in the truest sense, involving much more than a distant validation of choices and decisions made in Paris. When our co-curators were not available, for personal or ceremonial reasons, our questions and textual documents were relayed by the Art Centre for consideration, amendment, and approval. Nicolas Garnier and I only wrote three panel texts to contextualise the exhibition, on three topics: the making of the exhibition, the history of the Milingimbi art movement, and the work of Karel Kupka in the region. All the remaining texts were produced by the Art Centre, reflecting different voices in the community. The experience that the Milingimbi art workers have developed over the past decade in working with museum collections shaped the process, their input extending from the selection of works to the scenography with the subgroupings of paintings in display cases and the dual colour scheme used throughout the exhibition space, red for the Dhuwa moiety, yellow for the Yirritja moiety (see Figure 6). All the works were renamed in Yolŋu-matha and where possible, attributed to individual artists.
31The stories which were recorded in Milingimbi offered a rare insight into the spiralling depth of these historical paintings. They were ancestral narratives as well as assertions of authority over the designs and associated knowledge. They poetically conveyed the ways in which individual Yolŋu relate to the waterscapes of their territories, from maritime spaces and open sea to coastal wetlands, intertidal mangrove areas, and freshwater ecosystems. Through the testimonies from the descendants of the artists, the exhibition brought to the fore the ecological relationality of these aquatic environments where human and non-human activities have coexisted for thousands of years. The paintings revealed these waterscapes as a concept grounded in Yolŋu experience of kinship.
As we sought to translate complex cultural concepts without impoverishing Yolŋu thought, the Yolŋu voice remained privileged in the exhibition itinerary, through the use of concepts expressed in Yolŋu-matha throughout. These Yolŋu words and concepts, marked by an asterisk whenever they appeared in text, were defined, and interpreted in a glossary made available to the visitors who were thereby literally invited to immerse themselves in the Yolŋu aquatic imaginary. Our attempt to translate the depth of these connections and their spiritual value without interfering in the narratives resulted in a fairly demanding exhibition, with a certain degree of opacity which we deliberately maintained and valued.
Figure 6. Entrance to the Guḻarri Exhibition
© Jessica De Largy Healy, 2021 (Courtesy of Milingimbi Art & Culture Centre & Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac)
32While Yolŋu bark paintings are not religious objects in the more canonic senses, neither as ritual artefacts nor as objects of devotion, they are of undeniable religious significance to the descendants of their makers. Beyond the ethical ethos that has concerned Australian museums within their particular post-colonial context, the attention/respect given to Aboriginal historical collections in exhibitions through display, discourse and Indigenous interventions nowadays plays a considerable part in conveying more broadly the enduring beauty of Yolŋu religious sentiment and experience. With the renewed sense of wonder occasioned through exhibition collaborations by a finer understanding of the paintings and of their entanglements in past and present social and religious dynamics, museum mediation practices can turn, decisively, into a moral responsibility. Such responsibility requires a certain number of practical adjustments to be made, on a case-by-case basis, to accommodate the introduction of spiritual values into the secular museum space. In the making of the Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi exhibition, these museum adjustments were particularly reflected by the way in which, in several potentially critical instances (delays in labelling for ceremonial reasons, late change of the ‘poster’ painting to satisfy local socio-ritual dynamics, last minute revision of the exhibition title to refer specifically to both moieties), the Yolŋu principle of slow time came to bear on the standard production calendar.
33The recent appointment as head of the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac of Emmanuel Kasarhérou, the former director of the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in New Caledonia and expert on Pacific collections and communities, has revitalised the much criticised ‘dialogic’ motto of this Parisian institution: “Là où dialoguent les cultures”. Kasarhérou’s commitment to the inclusion of multiple voices within the museum space and to a vision of heritage “as living material, invested and re-invested continuously, and on which museum professionals can no longer claim a form of exclusivity” (Kasarhérou 2021) was echoed in the way the museum staff entered and responded to the Guḻarri gapu yothu yindi collaboration as it was set up by the curatorial team.
34The experimental edge of the exhibition space, the Atelier Martine Aublet, importantly has allowed for concessions to be made in terms of public mediation: foregoing the conventional discourse on the Aboriginal Dreamtime and its symbols, the space made it possible to render the complex processes of cultural representation and linguistic translation through concerted curatorial choices. Rather than being restrictive, the mise en scène of these connections enables the public to perceive the objects differently, within the broader ‘religious’ frame in which they continue to exist. Through the chosen display of paintings and their stories expressed in Yolŋu terms, conveying unique combinations of seasonal and place-bound observations, of hunting, gathering, and fishing wisdom with historical and ancestral narratives, the viewers were also invited to expand their understanding of the ‘religious’ to encompass the deep relational ecology that binds humans and other-than-humans in these saltwater and freshwater environments.
35Museum collaborations, I believe, when entered into respectfully, can be seen as an alternative form of restitution. Without entering into a highly charged political debate here –especially with regards to the recent upheaval in the French museum world which followed President Macron’s now famous University of Ouagadougou’s declaration in 2017 on the repatriation of African cultural heritage to France’s former colonies29– I would argue that collaborations such as the co-curatorship experiment described in this paper lead to the recognition of continuing Indigenous authority over their collections. As Yolŋu-led two-way processes, these processes enrich the museums as much if not even more than they do the communities by restoring the full significance to the collections and myriad possibilities for their display, interpretation, and reception. In this sense, this approach activates the “new relational ethics” (Sarr & Savoy 2018) that are called for today in post-colonial museum contexts.
I am grateful to Ksenia Pimenova and Pierre Petit for the opportunity to participate in the international workshop “Religious heritage in public museums: Post-colonial and post-socialist perspectives” held online by the University of Brussels (ULB) from 5-6 May 2021. Despite the general fatigue that many participants were experiencing by then in relation to virtually hosted events, the hosts successfully created a collegial, lively, and most stimulating intellectual forum. I am also indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their generous comments.
In addition to the leading roles played by my mukul bäpa (paternal aunt) and my ŋäpipi (uterine uncle), the exhibition would not have been possible without the dedication and professionalism of Rosita Holmes, Art Centre manager, Salome Harris, Art Centre linguist, Philippa Jahn, Collections manager, and Max Moon, who took up this latter role in 2021. I also acknowledge Leon Milmurru, Matthew Djipurrtjun, Paul Gotjirri, and Susan Balbunga who led the exhibition’s experimental film-making program. I am most grateful to my two dhuways, Michael Mungula and George Milaypuma, two senior artists and ceremonial leaders who offered preliminary counsel around the exhibition proposal. The musée du quai Branly teams agreed to engage in this collaboration on what were mostly Yolŋu terms, and I thank Nicolas Garnier in particular for his unwavering commitment to this co-curatorship at all stages of its development. This article reflects my personal views and considerations on this collective initiative.