One Fine Show: “The Stars We Do Not See, Australian Indigenous Art” at the National Gallery of Art

Welcome to One Fine Show, where Observer highlights a recently opened exhibition at a museum not in New York City, a place we know and love that already receives plenty of attention.

Indigenous art has been having a moment at fairs, museums, gallery shows and biennials. As with all trends, several elements in the zeitgeist contribute to this popularity. We’re in a post-Zombie Formalism, post-post-internet, post-post-2017 holding pattern where no one big idea has emerged. These older traditions are time-tested and underrepresented, so they’re hard to argue with. Last and most importantly, most art critics and consumers are not familiar with the traditions behind this kind of art, which allows them to set aside their preconceptions and simply appreciate the works on their own merits. Each show is equally educational for all of us.

A new show at the National Gallery of Art brings a host of impressive artworks to the nation’s capital that are foreign in every way. “The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art” presents nearly 200 works from a period spanning the late 1800s to the present, drawn from the National Gallery of Victoria’s collection. This exhibition will soon travel around America and represents the largest presentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art ever shown outside Australia.

It’s challenging to speak generally about these works, as they aim to represent a “visual thread connecting more than 250 nations across 65,000 years,” according to the press release. However, most of them are abstract and, as with all good abstractions, feel as though they could have only emerged from a certain unique context. The exhibition takes its title from the cosmological teachings of Gulumbu Yunupiŋu (1943-2012), also known as “Star Lady,” who is renowned for her paintings that feature a unified field of crosses and white dots. These negative star clusters, seen in works like Garak (The Universe) (2008), feel arranged in an organic way. Drawn from many nights sleeping outdoors, Yunupiŋu demonstrates both the vastness and subjective nature of interconnectivity; though made by hand, her canvases could continue for miles if she wanted them to.

Yunupiŋu’s work emerged from the bark painting tradition of Yolŋu cosmology and another work in the exhibition demonstrates the grandness of that tradition. Gäna (Self) (2009-18) by Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu (1945-2021) uses sixteen bark paintings and nine hollow log coffins known as larrakitj to stirring effect. (“Yunupiŋu” is a common last name for many Yolŋu.) The installation confounds and impresses to the point that the self becomes lost. This is reflective of the artist’s own journey as it marks the point at which she turned away from figuration.

More contemporary works in the show include the video Entr’acte (2023) by Hayley Millar Baker (b. 1990), which captures a woman’s facial transition from rage to grief. Though Baker’s Aboriginal heritage informs her practice, it’s bold of the museum to include a work so different in this show. It asks what these themes of integration with the universe might look like today. For similar reasons, I must confess a weakness for the video Scripture for a Smokescreen, Episode 1 – Dolphin House (2022) by Amrita Hepi (b. 1989). Via choreography, it explores the 1960s NASA-funded project to talk with dolphins in the hope that it might facilitate extraterrestrial communications. This exhibition offers work drawn from under-shown traditions but offers even broader context to visitors who take seriously its advice about stepping outside of the self.

“The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art” is on view at the National Gallery of Art through March 1, 2026.

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