The Stars We Do Not See

I am a bit late in the game to be talking about this, but all the way back in December my super amazing wife and I went to go see a travelling exhibit at the National Gallery of Art titled “The Stars We Do Not See.” It comprised of works by indigenous Australians and it was phenomenal. The style of the works were all so new to me, comprised of motifs we hadn’t seen before coming from a tradition we were unfamiliar with. I think the closest thing they looked like was all the tingatinga art we saw in Tanzania, with repeating designs based in nature. All the dots made for an entrancing way to create the image. It’s not exactly pointillism, and for some of the works each dot (in some cases painted with a brush made of human hair) represented not a portion of an image but a star, all connected throughout the universe. Wawurritjpal II (the fish) by Wukun Wanambi, 2005. Warrnyu Dhawu (Flying Fox Story) by Charlie Djurritjini, 2018 Really the cultural context probably rendered the art…