Martumili artists (l-r) Ngamaru Bidu, Kumpaya Girgirba and Ngalangka Nola Taylor standing in front of Yarrkalpa (Hunting Ground) near the Martumili Art Shed, Parnngurr, 2013 Image: Gabrielle Sullivan
"The National Museum of Australia in partnership with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi will open the acclaimed First Nations creation saga Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, at the Humayun's Tomb World Heritage Site Museum in New Delhi, India, in November 2025. The first major National Museum of Australia exhibition to tour India, Songlines features a dramatic chase across the Australian deserts and showcases the ways that ancient knowledge, story, song, dance, culture and protocols are woven into the landscape and are grounded by ‘tjukurrpa’ or Aboriginal Law.
The exhibition in New Delhi will be the fifth international destination for Songlines which debuted in Canberra in 2017 and has since toured to the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Finland. A world’s first in scale and complexity, this epic exhibition highlights five sections of the Indigenous Western and Central Desert songlines through nearly 300 paintings and objects, song, dance, photography and multimedia, to narrate the story of the Seven Sisters, as they fled along Ancestral routes, across deserts, pursued relentlessly by a sorcerer.
Traditional Owners of Cave Hill (Seven Sisters) 2017 by Brenda Douglas, Tjala Arts National Museum of Australia © the artist/Copyright Agency 2020 Image: Brenda Douglas
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.
Minyipuru 2008 by Nyangapa Nora Nangapa (Nungabar), Martumili Artists © the artist/Copyright Agency 2020 Image: National Museum of Australia
Background
The project that led to the Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters exhibition resulted from an urgent plea by Anangu 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 Anangu 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 (Anangu 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.
Snake sculptures and mirru (spear throwers) 1982–92 by Ikula, Niningka Lewis, Mildred Nyunkiya Lyons, Nora, Jean Inyalanka Burke, Billy Cooley, Pulya Taylor, Nellie Nungarrayi Patterson, Tiger, Kangin
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 Ara Irititja, in Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory. The original exhibition was led by senior curator Margo Ngawa Neale."
The National Museum of Australia in partnership with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi will open the acclaimed First Nations creation saga Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters, at the Humayun's Tomb World Heritage Site Museum in New Delhi on 22nd November, on view until 1st March, 2026.
Date 20-11-2025