Repainting, and Why This Atlas Draws No Wandjina

Wandjina images are maintained. A person with the authority to do so repaints them, and some panels carry dozens of superimposed layers, which is why the figures are simultaneously ancient and current and why dating them is difficult. To an outside eye trained on European conservation, repainting looks like damage to an original. In the tradition it is the opposite, because an unmaintained Wandjina is a neglected one and neglect has consequences for rain and for country. Style has shifted across the layers, with more recent figures stockier and some given eyelashes, so the panels record their own history of care. Who may do this is not open.

Authority to paint a Wandjina belongs to people of the three custodial peoples who have been through their own law, and the three peoples, represented together through the Mowanjum Aboriginal Art and Culture Centre near Derby, have stated that others may not use the image or the name without their permission. That claim has been argued publicly more than once when non-Aboriginal artists have produced Wandjina figures, and the custodians have pressed it each time. This atlas takes the claim as the operative fact. There is no Wandjina drawing on this page and there will not be one: it carries a marker recording that its imagery is restricted by the people who hold it rather than an emblem. Facts about the Wandjina, who holds them, what they do, how they are painted and by whom, are recorded freely. The image itself is not this atlas's to reproduce, and it is certainly not ours to invent.