Aboriginal Artists Created Massive Works During Colonization

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new study reveals that Aboriginal artists created images of powerful ancestral beings in response to European colonization. The findings of the eight-year study, led by Paul Taçon, an archaeologist at Griffith University, were published on August 14 by the journal Australian Archaeology.

The research focused on the Awunbarna region, also known as Mount Borradaile, in northwestern Arnhem Land, Australia's Northern Territory. This area, owned by the Aboriginal Amurdak people, is celebrated for its rock paintings, some dating back 15,000 years. Rock art from the 1800s and early 1900s at Awunbarna is notable for its traditional depictions of local fauna, alongside new subjects like painted hands, European ships, and firearms. The region also features numerous exceptionally large paintings of humans, animals, and ancestral figures, including Rainbow Serpents, created after Europeans arrived.

While large paintings have appeared in western Arnhem Land for as long as 18,000 years, their number increased significantly during the contact period in both Awunbarna and the wider region. Taçon and his colleagues collaborated with senior Amurdak traditional owner Charlie Mungulda to document rock art at 165 sites across Awunbarna. They concluded that the rise in oversized paintings served as a way to reassert power over their land and culture, which faced threats from colonization. The team examined images of Rainbow Serpents, including one 20 feet long with a fierce crocodile head, a long tongue, and sharp teeth. They also documented a giant man and the only known rock art image of a whale. Additionally, a large, serpent-shaped stone arrangement measuring 125 feet was recorded.

Dating these paintings is challenging, but researchers observed that several Rainbow Serpent images were painted over older works using white pipe clay. These white pipe clay paintings typically erode within a few hundred years, sometimes even within a few decades, leading the team to infer they were made post-contact. Rainbow Serpents are ancestral beings believed to control and fold time, and they are associated with change. Aboriginal Rainbow Serpent stories teach lessons about accepting, coping with, and potentially controlling change. The study's authors write that large paintings of these creatures and other entities offered a“visually compelling way to make authoritative declarations about the importance of maintaining Aboriginal tradition in the face of cultural change.”

Source: ARTnews

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