The Seven Sisters’ Odyssey

The Humayun’s Tomb Museum comes alive with the Aboriginal Seven Sisters’ saga through 300 artworks from Australia that reveal ancient connections between land, culture, and survival

- PANKIL JHAJHRIA

N 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.

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.