Dry Season Wind – Jarracharra

TEMPORARY EXHIBITION
DRY SEASON WIND – JARRACHARRA
Indigenous Australian Textiles

Fundação Oriente, in collaboration with the Australian Embassy in Portugal, is pleased to host the Dry Season Wind – Jarracharra exhibition, a powerful collection of textile art produced by indigenous women from the Maningrida region, in western Arnhem Land, Australia.

The exhibition, an initiative of the remote Bábbarra Women's Centre, was launched in 2019 at the Australian Embassy in Paris by five of its artists, attracting international attention and causing a huge stir across the indigenous textile and fashion sector. Since then, the exhibition toured several countries and it now arrives in Portugal including a collection of 52 textile artworks handprinted by 20 artists.

The Maningrida region is situated on the coast of the Arafura Sea, approximately 500 km east of Darwin. It is home to 80 clans, many of which still live in their ancestral lands. It is also home to one of the most linguistically diverse communities in the world, with a population of just 2,500 people, who speak about 12 languages.

The Bábbarra Women's Centre was originally established as a refuge for marginalized women in the early 1980s. It currently supports over 30 women artists, having produced over 100 screenprint designs, reflecting the various cultures and countries of Arnhem Land.

The designs showcased in Jarracharra are inspired by the land where the artists come from. They feature simple, but enthusiastic motifs, such as sacred rocks, female water spirits, turtles, mud crabs, bush foods, food gathering sites and ceremonies, alongside narratives of djang, their ancient creation stories, which promote land and lifestyle protection for future generations, offering the world a new insight into Australian indigenous art.

Jarracharra is the powerful cold wind that blows across Arnhem Land each dry season, signifying the beginning of a period of exchange between clans and an annual ceremonial coming together. A metaphor for the way the Bábbarra Women's Center brings together different indigenous cultures and stories, presenting them in this exhibition in a cohesive manner, as one single body, in the same way as several artists work together as a family in Bábbarra.