Art from a lost world: Foundation Cartier shows Sally Gabori in Paris

It's never too late to reinvent yourself and indulge in old or new passions. Sally Gabori is not only an unusual woman and artist, but also the best proof of this philosophy, as Gabori still took up her paintbrush at the age of 81. Until her death at 91, she worked on an impressive body of work as a testimony to her homeland and her life. The Fondation Cartier is currently dedicating itself to this impressive œuvre and is showing works by the Aboriginal artist Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda, her tribal name, which translated means "dolphin".

Sally Gabori belongs to the Australian Aboriginal people Kaiadilt, which originated in the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia. For thousands of years the Kaiadilt lived in almost complete isolation and until the late 1940s continued to live according to traditional ways. So it is hardly surprising that Sally Gabori used her newly discovered love of painting and her previously undiscovered talent to draw on her memories to bring her homeland, nature and landscapes, and life to life in her paintings.

Looking at first paintings, Australian artist Melville Escott recognizes the old country. A recognition that is deeply emotionally rooted, since her works are expressive abstract paintings. Each painting in its abstraction and richness of color can be seen as a kind of translation of her very private and mythological experience of Aboriginal culture.

Completely devoted to the tradition of her tribe, she spends her early years as a hunter-gatherer in a purely indigenous culture. Missionaries and a severe drought force her and her family to move to a reservation on Mornington Island in the 1940s. Uprooting and displacement follow, which in turn inevitably results in forgetting and loss. With her art, Sally Gabori brings these memories back to the surface. Already her first paintings expose this very early life, her memories of the river, and the landscapes that were the scene of hunting. These images, deep-seated in her, she awakens colorfully on the canvases, recognizable to her and to others. For example, complex systems of stone fish traps were built on shoals around the island. The realization of this, indeed the recognition of the old past, makes her enthusiasm for painting grow and her productivity increase immeasurably, so that she becomes a full-time painter and even has to harness her daughters. Her productivity knows no bounds, and in her short career as a painter, she leaves behind a body of work of over 2000 paintings - that is a painting almost every other day.

Already during her lifetime, her work was honored in several solo and group exhibitions. Crowned with the invitation to the 55th Biennale as a representative of her country. Even though she is one of the most important figures of contemporary art in Oceania, she is still largely unknown in Europe. The Foundation Cartier is now making a significant contribution to making her works accessible to a broad public. The building of the Fondation Cartier, bright, open, and transparent, framed by an especially creatively laid out garden, is as if made for the large, colorful, and abstract paintings that show very concretely Gabor's nature and landscape experiences that she has observed throughout her life on her island, even if the viewer cannot see them at first glance.

"This is my land, this is my sea, this is who I am." Sally Gabori

Her pictures convey both pain and joy: Pain about the expulsion from her homeland, about the loss of her language, and joy in turn about the return to the land of her youth, to the land of her people. With extraordinary power and the skill of a great painter, she lets us participate in her world through her paintings. Each painting expresses her deep love for her homeland. Her paintings are among the most beautiful contemporary Australian landscapes.