Cosmic Echoes Exhibition: bridging Indigenous wisdom and modern science in a unique artistic collaboration

Daily Maverick

21-05-2025

Australian and South African Indigenous artists explore creativity at the intersection of modern science and ancient wisdom.
Cosmic Echoes is up at Wits Origins Centre from Friday 23 May until Saturday 5 July.
Cosmic Echoes stems from a vision by the SKAO and its partners to bring together Indigenous artists living and working close to the SKA telescope sites. This vision embodies the spirit of international science and engineering collaboration that is the SKAO itself, bringing together many nations around two unique and culturally rich sites in Australia and South Africa to study the same sky.
The Exhibition is a transformative journey of collaboration between world-renowned artists, local youth, and Elders who have been inspired by the traditional knowledge of ancient cultures and the wonders of modern science. A celebration of humanity's ancient cultural wisdom.
The exhibition will be on at the Wits Origins Centre until Saturday July 5 th. It reflects the richness of the Indigenous understanding of the world; an understanding developed by observing the movements of the night sky since ancient times. Cosmic Echoes explores how this traditional knowledge resonates in the creativity of living artists who are sharing their insights with scientists working to unlock the secrets of the Universe.
About a decade ago, the first SKAO Indigenous art exhibition called Shared Sky was developed by the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University, in association with SARAO, SKA Australia, and in collaboration with Yamaji Art, Geraldton, Australia and the First People Centre at the Bethesda Art Centre, South Africa. Cosmic Echoes is the successor of this venture, highlighting once more the creativity of the people of the remote regions where the SKAO's telescopes are being built.
In June 2024, a group of artists worked with local Indigenous youth and Elders in South Africa to prepare for the Cosmic Echoes exhibition. The workshops in Carnarvon, in the Northern Cape region where the SKA-Mid telescope is being built, produced visual art as well as performance art under the guidance of a team of facilitators led by the Cosmic Echoes Curator Sylvia Vollenhoven.
Meanwhile in Western Australia, the SKAO and CSIRO commissioned and briefed a group of Aboriginal visual artists from the Wajarri Yamaji People, Traditional Owners and Native Title Holders of the land where the SKA-Low telescope is located.
In addition to featuring mainly established artists, the Cosmic Echoes Exhibition curates the youth work in a creative conversation with their professional counterparts. And in turn the artists from Australia and South Africa are 'in conversation' with each other and with the SKAO scientists. Together they achieve an elegant symmetry, echoes of a distant past that speak to a common future.
The Exhibition opened in Cape Town August last year at the UN General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It has since been to Artscape in Cape Town and Carnarvon, the hometown of most of the youth artists featured.
The Cosmic Echoes: Shared Sky Indigenous Art Exhibition is an SKAO initiative, in collaboration with SARAO, CSIRO and the Wajarri Yamaji Aboriginal Corporation.
The SKAO recognises and acknowledges the Indigenous peoples and cultures that have traditionally lived on the lands on which their facilitsies are located.
In Australia, the SKAO and CSIRO acknowledge the Wajarri Yamaji as Traditional Owners and Native Title Holders of Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory, the site where the SKA-Low telescope is being built. DM
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