Tarnanthi on Tour USA: Kulata Tjuta

Kuḻaṯa Tjuṯa is a monumental installation comprising 550 kuḻaṯa (spears) suspended in a formation resembling a nuclear explosion, which hovers above a circular arrangement of hand-carved piti (wooden bowls). This outstanding work of contemporary Aboriginal art, created by fifty-nine artists from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands of South Australia, was one of the highlights of the Tarnanthi 2017 festival.

Kuḻaṯa Tjuṯa dramatically expresses the loss and dispossession still felt by Aṉangu from atomic testing on their Country in the 1950s and ’60s. This work, from the AGSA collection, now forms the centrepiece of an international exhibition that documents the responses of First Nations artists around the world to the impacts of nuclear testing, nuclear accidents and uranium mining on First Nations peoples and their land.

The exhibition, Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology, is touring the United States for almost two years. Beginning at the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Sante Fe, it travels Michigan and California until late-2023. It includes works by First Nations artists from Australia, the Pacific region, Japan, Greenland, Canada and the United States.