Two artists explore land and culture through healing art at Bundanon Art Museum

Bundanon Art Museum in New South Wales, Australia, opened a dual exhibition featuring the works of Pitjantjatjara artist Betty Muffler and Pakistani-born artist Mehwish Iqbal.

The museum, located on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, hosts these works to explore how land and culture provide healing for people and the environment. Betty Muffler, a Ngangkaṟi or traditional healer, presented her first solo gallery show at the age of 82.

Her exhibition, Ngangkaṟi Ngura, features paintings of her sacred Country, which was affected by nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. Her work depicts her role as a healer who monitors the health of both the land and her people. Mehwish Iqbal showcased her exhibition, Bait-al-Nahl. The House of Bees, which uses her training in Persian miniature painting to tell stories of her people and the land divided by the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan.

Her work includes a field of porcelain poppy pods to represent the forced cultivation of opium in neighboring Afghanistan. The museum paired these two artists to highlight shared experiences of colonial harm and land-based indigenous cultures. While their cultures met only about 200 years ago, the curator noted similarities between Iqbal's Siah Qalam technique and Aboriginal dot painting. Both artists use intricate lines and dots to express sacred stories and cultural identity.