The opening reception will be this coming Saturday, January 28, 4 - 7 p.m.. More than 70 pieces will be on display in an area that encompasses 4,000 sq. ft. of the Frost Museum's real estate.
Miami's Frost is the second stop on a two-year national tour. Praise for the show has been effusive, “These women have re-drawn the boundaries of Aboriginal art and are re-defining the vision of contemporary art,” says Dr. Jordana Pomeroy, Director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU. “With subject matter ranging from faraway celestial bodies to the tiniest of flowers on the native bush plum, they assert the wisdom of revered matriarchs and grapple with the most fundamental questions of existence.”
Perhaps it is the freshness of the work that inspires such hyperbole among those who have seen the work. “When I first saw this work it felt like I had been struck by lightning,” says Dennis Scholl who with wife Debra is a Miami-based collector and philanthropist.
You can tell from the artists' names that they are neither Scandinavian, Italian, British or German: Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu and her sister, among others. The work is as original as the names.
Despite their origins, the Aboriginal peoples are not oblivious to the broader community of humankind. “These artists are globally alert and connected to our modern world,” says Henry Skerritt, curator of the exhibition. “There has never been a more urgent need for contemporary artists to imagine our shared predicament as the diverse occupants of the same planet."
Though it appears to be promoted as a women's movement, I would guess that this cultural exposure will do much to foster an increased understanding of what it means to be human on this third rock from the sun.
Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it.
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