A DCEC Museum Outing

The DCEC (the DC Explorers Club, formerly known as DCDC, the DC Dinner Club) met at the Phillips Collection this morning to see "Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia."

Text introducing the exhibit:

In the late 1980s women artists took the reins of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement in Australia. After years of working in the shadows, assisting their fathers and husbands, they burst onto the scene, giving it a new vitality and dynamism. Women artists redrew the boundaries of Aboriginal art, and continue to be among its most daring innovators. Though cultural activity has always been central to the secular and sacred lives of women, art making in recent decades has offered a key means for women to also maintain their social and economic independence.

 The nine artists whose works are on display

Lightning on Stone (painted on a piece of bark)

The Yolngu say that lightning is the tongue of Mundukul, the lightening snake.

Spiders 

Stars 

Larrakitj Poles - originally created by the Yolngu peoples to house the bones of their dead

Fishnet 

Lunch on the Tryst Cafe's deck 

From left to right, Mary, Christine, Synthia, Ginny, Jodi

                                        Mary next to the sign in front of the museum the Infinite spotlights nine leading Aboriginal Australian women artists: Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu, and matriarchs, commanding leadership roles and using art to empower their respective communities. The subjects of their art are broad, yet each work is an attempt to grapple with fundamental questions of existence, asking us to slow down and pay attention to the natural world. ya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu, and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. Hailing from remote areas across the island continent, they are revered matriarchs, commanding leadership roles and using art to empower their respective communities. The subjects of their art are broad, yet each work is an attempt to grapple with fundamental questions of existence, asking us to slow down and pay attention to the natural world.