Painting the earth, dreaming the world

For the Aborigines, the word “art” does not exist: it is inseparable from the land, language, traditions, myths and rites. Through more than a hundred works from the collection of Alison and Peter W. Klein, built up during their regular trips to Australia, to local galleries and art centers, the exhibition “Aboriginal Art, Dreamtime” invites you to discover and contemplate these representations which preserve and tell the story of Aboriginal dreams, mythological episodes linked to the territory, rooted in a 65,000-year-old culture. We decipher these mystical maps through symbols – paths, water points, wind corridors, itineraries of ancestral beings – which narrate founding myths, such as that of the Seven Sisters, pursued across the sky and the desert, and becoming a constellation. This contemporary Aboriginal painting on canvas emerged in 1971, when a young Australian schoolteacher, Geoffrey Bardon, appointed to the Papunya school, observed children tracing patterns on the sand, evoking those in Australian caves dating back more than 30,000 years. He then encourages the community to paint these ritual motifs, and provides them with canvases and acrylic paint. Painting becomes for indigenous peoples not only an identity card of the territory, but also, in turn, a political weapon to claim their rights. Divided into three sections, the beautiful tour of the Lodève Museum, which presents some of the greatest Aboriginal artists, provides the keys to understanding this art which is above all a story. On each cartel, a map locates the place of creation, reminding us that styles vary profoundly from one region to another, from the cross-hatching of Arnhem Land to the vibrant dots of the central desert. An exhibition all the more poignant as it resonates with the museum’s permanent collection, also anchored in the territory, reminding us that all art is born from the soil from which it was born.