The work, which will be officially unveiled in Canberra next week, will be the showpiece on the top of the MQB building, nestled among Parisian landmarks and visible from the Eiffel Tower.
Entitled Dayiwul Lirlmin(The Dream of the Scales of the Barramundi) is a 25 cm square work that will be scaled up to be a 700 square metres on the museum’s rooftop.
It is based on a traditional story from Nyadbi’s East Kimberley country, the site of one of the world’s largest diamond mines. The story tells is of three women who tried to catch the barramundi Daiwul using a spiniflex trap. They chased it into the shallows but it succeeded in escaping by jumping over the trap and getting away through the rocks. While it fell, its scales scattered on the ground at the location of the current mine, The artist has emphasised the similarity between the scales and diamonds,
Nyadbi was commissioned to paint the work for Paris’s newest museum, opened in 2006 to display the work of Indigenous artists Africa, Asia, Oceania and America. The Museum is a recognition of the important influence of these artists on the work of cubists and fauvist artists in particular as well as the anthropological work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. The collection comprises some 300,000 artefacts, including musical instruments, sculptures and textiles.
Lena Nyadbi is an East Kimberly artist who did not start painting until late in life. She is known for busy dot-filled paintings using repetitive long isolated brushstrokes represent the Kumerra or cicatrices (body scars) made by spearheads during initiation ceremonies. Her wall treatments are used in the interior of the MQB and she is one of eight significant Aboriginal artists whose work was featured in a landmark opening exhibition at the MQB in 2006.
Dayiwul Lirlmin will be unveiled next week by the French ambassador Stéphane Romatet and the the President of the MQB Stéphane Martin. It will be installed in Paris in June.
