Explore Australian Aboriginal culture through the Seven Sisters’ Odyssey exhibition in Delhi

In Aboriginal Australian mythology, the Seven Sisters were celestial women — the Pleiades — who descended to earth and were relentlessly pursued by the shape-shifting sorcerer Wati Nyiru. Fleeing across vast deserts, they moved from water source to water source, always wary of Wati Nyiru, who could transform into food sources or shade trees in an attempt to lure and capture them. Desperate to survive, the sisters eventually ascended to the sky, becoming the stars of the star cluster Pleiades, with constellation Orion, often associated with their pursuer, eternally chasing them across the night sky.

Why should you make a stop at the Seven Sisters’ Odyssey exhibition in New Delhi?

Now, Delhi audiences can walk in the Seven Sisters’ footsteps through the immersive exhibition ‘Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters’, on view at the Humayun’s Tomb Museum, till March 1.

Presented by the National Museum of Australia in partnership with Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), the exhibition traces the sisters’ journey across ancestral lands in the Australian continent. 

The exhibition features around 300 paintings, sculptures, films, photographs, and multimedia installations, guiding visitors along the ‘songlines’, or the sacred tracks across desert landscapes that are also the guides to waterholes, food, and shelter. Visitors can literally experience walking in the sisters’ footsteps, following their path across the lands of the Anangu, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, and Martu peoples. 

Symbols of survival

At the exhibition, visitors encounter life-sized, hand-woven fibre sculptures arranged in clusters, retelling the tale of the sisters. The sorcerer Wati Nyiru appears too — sculpted into many of the installations, lurking, watching and following them. In one of the installations, large sculptures of the sisters appear suspended in mid-air. Below them lie the worldly, material possessions they leave behind — represented through shells, sticks, and insects crafted from fabric.

The dot paintings arranged throughout the path is a depiction of the sisters’ track. These artworks also contain symbolic motifs created in white and warm, earthy tones of ochre, red, orange and brown, with water holes marked in blue. Each symbol has a meaning: a U-shaped mark represents a Sister; a concentric circle stands for a waterhole; and pairs of footsteps hint at Wati Nyiru in pursuit. A set of seven intricately coloured ceramic pots is another highlight of the exhibition, symbolising the moment the sisters transform into vessels to escape the sorcerer’s gaze.

Also on display are bead necklaces, woven baskets, bent wires used by young girls in storytelling games by tapping or drawing on sand, and improvised needles made from the keys attached to tins of meat. In earlier times, when needles were scarce, these tin keys were repurposed into essential tools.

Culture, land, and story

Roobina Karode, curator and KNMA director, says the Seven Sisters’ story also feels important for today’s world, where many communities are dealing with loss of culture and growing distance from the environment.

“Sharing such knowledge widely is crucial because indigenous and marginalised voices sustain our collective futures,” she says. “Indigenous knowledge systems offer vital frameworks for addressing the crises we face today, such as ecological degradation, cultural fragmentation, and disconnection.” 

Karode further highlights the use of immersive imagery incorporated in the show: “Multimedia elements are fundamental to the exhibition experience because they create the sensory and imaginative immersion necessary to enter this worldview without requiring prior knowledge.” Indigenous knowledge systems are grounded in land stewardship and reciprocity, offering practical and ethical frameworks for how communities relate to their environment and to one another, she adds.

This article is written by Pankil Jhajhria