Everywhen: Australia's Indigenous Experience
Upon exiting the elevator on the third floor of Harvard’s art museum, one is greeted with a barrage of pink tubes, closely resembling human intestines. It was so noticeable and eye catching because the entrance to this exhibition perfectly framed my view of the painting. It stood approximately 100 feet away, but its size allowed this, and I could still make out relatively tiny details. This ostensibly random mess hinted at a purpose for every curve. Its unique style galvanized me to approach and enter this exhibit. This was more than likely the intention of the curator of this exhibition because I saw multiple people experience the same process when they exited onto the third floor. The placement of Big Yam by Emily Kngwarray was intentional and the first step to a successful exhibit, enticing an audience, was achieved by the curator.
The exhibit is called Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia and it represents how time relates to artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life in contemporary indigenous Australia. Most of the work was completed within the last forty years, with the exception of some historical artifacts to show progression and to highlight recurring themes in the culture. Adding these pieces was essential for this exhibit because “Everywhen” is a term used to describe the perception of a past that is “cyclical and circular,” which is a view in the indigenous cultures of Australia and therefore cannot be appreciated with only one era of work.
Upon entering the room, I noted that every piece has a natural flow, in contrast to sharp turns and edges, and often times there are circles or round objects, most likely to represent the idea that is held about the past. There were two works in particular that, in hindsight, represented the exhibit as a whole.
Two Women Dreaming, for example, was the first piece my eyes were drawn to when I entered the room after being beckoned by the Big Yam. One look and it’s easy to see why, the black and white contrast makes it look as though it’s moving and the bold gold lines outline four rectangles that never touch but seem to be connected by the bigger picture. Originally, I felt it was particularly odd that the lines weren’t straight but were distorted and lacked edge. One would presume that this was just an artist being sloppy but in reality there was purpose driving it, the style calls for dullness which evokes a warmer feeling than one would feel when staring at rectangles that were calculated and done painted with a ruler. In this way, meaning can be found in the method by which the object is prepared just like it could be found in the subject of the illustration.
The theme continued to a water-color drawing that was placed right next to the dark work of Two Women Dreaming. This one was called bunya and it emitted a calm aura. It seemed as though it was a flashback to a simple time of water, sun, and leaves. It is as though it was drawn from the perspective of a person looking out of a river because everything has a blue undertone. This work could have been a reference to multiple ideas, whether it be the simplicity of a time that the indigenous people saw before or a suggestion that even know there are places that maintained and remained unchanged. The true meaning remains a mystery to me, although this might be intended.
It is difficult to an outsider of the culture to capture the full essence of the idea of everywhen and what it signifies to the indigenous people of Australia. The purpose of the exhibit is to try to enlighten the outsider, but some of the meaning of an individual painting can still be lost. For example, the name Two Women Dreaming seemed to be as arbitrary a name for four tri-colored rectangles as any. There were four semi-independent rectangles so why is it two women? There is nothing here that suggests that it couldn’t be men so why did the artist choose to write women? “Two women dreaming” would seem like a painting about two women sleeping as they dream as opposed to two women’s dreams” which would be a painting about the dream itself, so is this supposed to be two women? Likewise, bunya could have been a reference that flies over the head of a typical observer. A Boston Globe article, entitled “Illuminating indigenous Australian art at Harvard,” suggests that every work contains intentionally obscure meanings and that each piece is just a “detail of a much larger picture.”
As I went around the exhibit I found this to be the case with all the works. It seemed as though individually the painting or drawing could not tell the whole story, it was only when analyzing the exhibit as a whole when one could recognize the pattern of circularity and flow that each work showed. This exhibit revealed a style unique to Australia’s indigenous people and portrayed everywhen through their eyes.