‘Walking Through A Songline’ to spotlight first nations artworks and epic stories from Australia

Goa Khabar : Bringing the ancient First Nations Australian tradition, Songlines, linked to aboriginal culture on the continent, to Goan shores, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the National Museum of Australia will showcase the international touring immersive art experience Walking Through A Songline (WTAS) at the Museum of Goa (MOG), Pilerne.

Produced by Mosster Studio (Melbourne-based artist duo) the exhibition will be making a stop at MOG for the final leg of its Indian tour. The exhibition will be open for public viewing from 14 March to 4 April 2025, at the Pilerne-based contemporary art museum. The India tour of WTAS is supported by the Centre for Australia-India Relations (CAIR), Deakin University, Tata BlueScope Steel, and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ).

The exhibition aims to explore the stories and knowledge of First Nations Australian communities documented through art, songs, motifs and patterns, preserved and showcased through modern technological interventions such as projection mapping. These artworks and traditions show significant similarities to ancient documentational artworks by indigenous communities in India and Goa, like the Usgalimal petroglyphs.

“WTAS explores the nexus between ancient Australian First Nations knowledge and cutting-edge technology, interpreting the work of more than 100 artists. Such stories form the foundational history of the Australian continent as told by artists, custodians and traditional owners. Songlines explain creation and transmit cultural values, including protocols of behaviour and how to live sustainably on this planet, as Australia’s First Nations peoples have for millennia.” said Paul Murphy, Australian Consul-General in Mumbai.

“The exhibition, Walking Through a Songline, which depicts the ancient story of the Seven Sisters from Indigenous Australian culture through state-of-the-art digital technology, aligns with Museum of Goa’s role as a contemporary space dedicated to highlighting artworks and practices rooted in the cultures of individuals and communities from all walks of life,” said Dr Subodh Kerkar, founder of the Museum of Goa, Pilerne.

Songlines, also called dreaming tracks, are a way of holding and passing on knowledge in non-text-based societies. These are millennia-old pathways of knowledge in the form of story, performance and art, that span the entire Australian continent, forming its foundational stories. They map the routes and activities of ancestral ‘creator beings’ that explain creation and transmit cultural values, including protocols of behaviour and living sustainably on the continent.

This immersive digital experience visualises the Seven Sisters Songline. This Songline begins in Australia’s Western Desert and as the Seven Sisters travel through the desert and across the sky, they map the land for millennia to come. In many cultures, including Greek and Indian astrology and Australia’s First Nation people refer to the Pleiades star cluster as seven women.