Price Drop ▷ Bäru ga Dhamalinu by Djambawa Marawili, 1996 | Etching Print

Djambawa is the very incarnation of the contemporary Aboriginal political leader who has used his art for decades to have his territorial rights recognized before the Australian parliament and to illustrate the centuries-old culture of his people.

The artist illustrates with this print one of the founding episodes of the mythology of his people but he has given few explanations on this legend because only initiates have the right to know its ins and outs. Here is the version that he was kind enough to provide on this myth: while the woman-ancestor Dhamalingu was cooking snails on the fire, her husband Baru, returning to the camp, received fragments of embers on him. Believing that his wife had done it on purpose, he threw her into the fire and then transformed himself into a crocodile. The fire spread around to set all the other tribes on fire. This legend embodies the carnage that the fire of anger can cause.