Australia is often seen as a vast desert continent. Yet the selection of bark paintings in this display reflect the importance of representations that concern water, whether the sea, wetlands, mangroves or freshwater ecosystems. The term Gularri denotes all these water areas.

Beyond questions of representation, the exhibition explains the complex ecology of these fragile environments where both human and non-human coexist. Through these paintings, the Yolngu people finely mapped their land, associating ancestral beings and places, land laws and founding myths.

This exhibition results from a partnership between French and Yolngu researchers.