Australian High Commissioner to India, Phillip Green OAM, said the stories of First Nations Australians are central to Australia's modern, diverse and rich heritage.
'The Australian Government is committed to elevating First Nations voices and providing a platform to share their culture, history and traditions with international audiences.
'As the relationship between Australia and India continues to grow, we seek to deepen our understanding of one another. Through the acclaimed Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, Indian audiences will be immersed in a vibrant showcase of Australia's First Nations art and culture. The Seven Sisters Songline is an epic narrative of the Australian continent, passed down through generations and shared through stories and songs by Australia's traditional custodians.
'This exhibition is a tangible example of the growing artistic and cultural ties between Australia and India. I am pleased this exhibition has been brought to India in partnership with two esteemed institutions – the National Museum of Australia and New Delhi's Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.'
National Museum of Australia Deputy Director First Nations, Dr Jilda Andrews, said Songlines is an invitation to share in and celebrate the importance of culture for the future.
'The culturally rich landscape of India offers a unique opportunity to share our ancient knowledge and practices in a new contemporary context,' said Dr Andrews. 'Songlines are vast and characterise Indigenous life on the Australian continent as grounded, connected and richly expressive – songlines are the connective threads that vein our Country,' she said.
'Songlines are epic stories that are imprinted across the landscape through creeks, waterholes, rocks, caves, trees and mountains. They are mirrored in the constellations visible in the night's sky and they are recalled through story, song, dance, ceremony and cultural practice,' said Dr Andrews.
'This dialogue finds expression in marvellous and creative ways and is celebrated throughout the exhibition,' said Dr Andrews.
Seven years in the making, Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is an Australian Aboriginal saga that portrays the dramatic story of creation, desire, flight and survival through the journey of female Ancestral beings pursued by a powerful, shape-shifting male figure.
By following the exhibition's trail of magnificent art and installations that function as portals to place, visitors effectively 'walk' the songlines. These are both complex spiritual pathways and vehicles for naming and locating waterholes and food sources critical for survival in the desert.
The exhibition features the world's highest resolution travelling DomeLab, which immerses visitors in images of Seven Sisters rock art from the remote Cave Hill site in South Australia, animated art works, and the transit of the Orion constellation and the Pleiades star cluster. Standing beneath the 7-metre-wide domed ceiling, visitors are transported to Seven Sisters sites on the songlines.
Background
The project that led to the Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters exhibition resulted from an urgent plea by Aṉangu traditional custodians of Australia's Central Western Desert, 'to help put the songlines back together as they were getting all broken up.' This initiative by the Aṉangu people was to not only preserve the Seven Sisters knowledge for future generations but also to engage all peoples in this invaluable piece of world heritage.
Songlines traverses three Indigenous lands: those of the APY (Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) people through the central deserts, the Ngaanyatjarra people to the west of Australia and the Martu people in the north-west of Australia.
Since 2010, National Museum of Australia curators, led by an Indigenous Community Curatorium of elders and knowledge holders, have gone back to Country to track the Seven Sisters songlines. Younger people are also now joining the curatorium as part of the intended cross-generational transfer of knowledge.
Along the journey, Indigenous cultural custodians recorded their knowledge of the Seven Sisters in art works, stories, and film, which have become part of the National Museum of Australia's National Historical Collection.
All research material collected for this project has been deposited in the Aboriginal-managed digital archive Aṟa Irititja, in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory.
The original exhibition was led by senior curator Margo Ngawa Neale.
As the exhibition tours the world, the project continues to be led and guided by community Cultural Ambassadors.
Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters received the prestigious Best in Show award at the 2018 Australian Museums and Galleries National Awards.
After opening in 2017 at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, Songlines travelled to the Western Australian Museum, Perth, in 2020–21 and then internationally to The Box in Plymouth, England (as part of the UK/Australia Season 2021–22, a joint initiative by the British Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, in 2022, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, in 2023 and Museokeskus Vapriikki, Finland, in 2024–25.
The exhibition will be on display at Humayun's Tomb World Heritage Site Museum from 22 November 2025 to 1 March 2026.
