1. NGAN’GI ART: WE PAINT THE STORIES OF OUR CULTURE

Online-Workshop 1 (in English)

What values are shared when Ngan’gi artists create art with a wish to share stories of Ngan’gi culture, cosmology, and knowledge? How can art facilitate cross-cultural communication ?

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, Maria Øien is presenting art and design stories made by Ngan’gi artists, an Aboriginal community in Northern Australia. She is exploring a parallel to Sami relationships to sacred Sieidis in nature. Furthermore, she takes a critical look at the intercultural contradictions involved in art sales by exploring the term «shame-job» and the statement «black art on white walls.»

In the second part of the workshop, participants are invited to share stories about how arts, nature and culture can be used to give voice to different perspectives and create community. 

[Photo: Stian Thoresen. Maria Øien learning to loop a dilly bag by Molly Yawalminy and Mercia Wawul in Nauiyu, 2007.]

References:

• Munn, N. D. 1970. The Transformation of Subject into Object in Walpiri and Pitjantjatjara Myth, in  Australian Aboriginal Anthropology. (eds) R. M. Berndt. Nedlands University of Western Australia Press, 141-163.
• Munn, N. D. 1973. Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Representation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Australian Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
• Morphy, H. 1991. Ancestral Connections: Art and an Aboriginal System of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Myers, F. R. 1986. Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place and Politics Among Western Desert Aborigines. Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.