in Perth through engagement with the local community. Comprising thousands of small organza bags filled with citrus leaves and infused with frankincense and essential oils, the installation fills the gallery with what Thania describes as “smells that recall a thousand places”. When she was first invited to exhibit at the John Curtin Gallery, Thania Petersen expressed a desire to connect with Yolŋu musicians, extending a sound project that had already taken her to Tunisia, India and Indonesia. She was aware of the centuries- old relationship between Makassan traders from South Sulawesi and the Yolŋu people – a relationship that predates the exile of her ancestor Tuan Guru, an Indonesian prince who was banished to South Africa by the Dutch in the late 1700s. In September 2025 Thania spent a week in Makassar collaborating with Yolŋu and Makassan elders and musicians who hold knowledge of their shared histories. Over the course of the trip, she made dozens of recordings, searching for a tangible sonic link to a collective past carried through song. She encountered a chant performed in Cape Town, Makassar and Arnhem Land – the connection she had been seeking. These recordings anchor her new multi- channel sound work, Jieker, named for a Cape Muslim expression of the Arabic dhikr, meaning ‘to remember.’ With significant contributions from Yolŋu and Makassan collaborators, and a rich visual culture to draw from, it felt important in developing this project to represent the historical connections between northern Australia and south-eastern Indonesia. The exhibition Dhomala (meaning sail) explores the exchange of culture, language, song and story that has shaped this relationship since pre-colonial times. For centuries, Makassan seafarers travelled from the port of Makassar to Marege (Arnhem Land) to harvest trepang, living for months alongside Yolŋu people. Through trade, intermarriage and shared labour, cultural and spiritual practices became intertwined – connections that Yolŋu and Makassan communities continue to honour today.
Sail-making and oceanic travel are celebrated in Dhomala through historic and contemporary works. Senior Yolŋu artist Margaret Rarru Garrawurra creates dhomola from pandanus and kurrajong fibre through a technology passed down through generations. Her video Dhomola Dhäwu (2020), shown alongside an etching of a prau, is presented with a hand-woven sail created by Makassan artisans, anchoring the gallery installation. Other works explore the ongoing significance of this history, including Djambanpuy Dhawu (The Tamarind Story) (2023), a stop-motion animation created by Milingimbi Art & Culture. Historical objects – including rare pandanus sails and a 1947 crayon drawing depicting a Makassan boat and cargo – further testify to enduring cultural and linguistic exchange. Alongside trade in goods, language and culture, deep friendships formed between Yolŋu and Makassans, and blood ties were made through intermarriage. These connections were abruptly severed with the enactment of legislation that effectively banned trade with Asia, and the last Makassan prau left Australia in 1907. Decades later, Australia’s segregationist policies would influence the racist legislation of apartheid in South Africa. While these historical legacies continue to shape both countries, the artists in this exhibition resist being defined by colonial narratives. In recent years, Thania Petersen has turned her attention to emerging ideological threats, drawing on spiritual traditions of song as a source of universal love that resists confinement to colonised spaces. In a contemporary world increasingly marked by disconnection and loneliness, artists are calling us home through the shared celebration of song. Thania Petersen questions how we can restore our old friendships, our old stories and our old connections. Through her immersive artworks she invites us to “surrender to a rhythm that comes from beyond linear time”, to turn to the liberation of music.
Thania Petersen’s Jawap / Dhomala A call and response across the ocean
A call and response across the ocean brings together living histories of the Indian Ocean, reuniting friendships and kin ties that were severed through transglobal acts of colonisation. For Thania Petersen, the ocean is a site of collective memory through which she traces the migration of Sufi music, a living archive of song that offers a framework of liberation. Through Sufi song, Thania maps the Indian Ocean as a pathway of return, reconstructing historical routes in an effort to reunite what colonialism severed. This idea is central to her new film JAWAP (2025). In a Cape Muslim context, jawap refers to an invitation to communal prayer through song, deriving from the Indonesian word jawab, meaning ‘to answer’. With sumptuous, at times psychedelic, visuals and a five-channel soundtrack, the film resists linear time, proposing a cyclical landscape where past and future selves nurture their own evolution. Shown with JAWAP is Thania’s immersive installation Rampies Sny . Previously realised in Cape Town and Tunisia, this olfactory installation has been created
‘Sound holds our memory. When you decode these sounds you can hear time, you can hear place, you can hear people from a different land. There was a time when we sang together, otherwise how could we know each other’s songs, each other’s melodies. How would these melodies have transferred from one continent to another? There is no way we have been separate our whole existence. Because we sing the same songs. We sing the same songs.
How?’
– Thania Petersen
Lia McKnight , Curator John Curtin Gallery
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Presented with the John Curtin Gallery
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