Inaugural Australian Indigenous cultural festival in Cuba

Media release from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Australia is bringing Indigenous art and photography to Cuba for the first time through the Australian Journey Festival, which opened on 26 January.

The Festival includes three separate exhibitions:

• Contemporary Australian art from the Balgo Hills, which explores the stories, lives and history of the Kukatya language speakers in the Balgo Hills, Western Australia
• Photographs by renowned Indigenous photographer, Wayne Quilliam, whose images tell stories of people in both urban and remote Indigenous communities
• Ritual and Ceremony, installations and images by Maree Clarke exploring the continuation and reclamation of the mourning rituals of Victorian Aboriginal people.

The Festival runs from 26 January to 24 February and was arranged with the assistance of Dr Felix Alfonso, the Vice Dean of the San Geronimo College of Havana, and the Cuban Ambassador to Australia HE Mr Pedro Monzon Barata.

The Australian Journey Festival is sponsored by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which has an extensive record of supporting international touring of Indigenous art in conjunction with Artbank, the Commonwealth art repository.

The Balgo collection has already visited 25 countries since 2009 in the Asia-Pacific and Latin America.