What is the culture and art of Oceania?

The primitive peoples in Oceania have created their own unique art in their long-term life and production practice. There are beautifully decorated canoes and paddles, bark cloth with colorful patterns, painted walls and various decorative buildings, such as venues, shrines, sacrificial rooms, warehouses, mysterious ancestor statues, masks, utensils, daily necessities with decorative patterns or simple shapes.

Until the middle of the 20th century, the primitive tribes in Oceania were still in the prehistoric stone age. Whether it is grotesque Maori wood carvings and mysterious Easter stone statues, or ancestral statues and masks in New Guinea, it is proved that Oceania is one of the most striking areas of primitive art in the world. Hundreds of years ago, in Australia, an ancient and isolated continent, there was a nation unrelated to other races in the world-Australian aborigines. At that time, they didn't have their own history and language. They accompany eucalyptus trees all the year round, interact with kangaroos and platypus, and live a life of almost complete isolation from the outside world. In the mountains and hills, they live in caves in case of accidents; In the forest and bushes, they build sheds with branches and cover them with skins and bark to keep out the cold; In the dry desert of Yuan Ye, they built sand walls to keep out the wind. It is in this long-term struggle with nature that Australian aborigines formed their own unique history and culture. During our short stay in Australia, we found that through Australian museums and art galleries, and through the painting art of Australian aborigines, we can see the precious history and culture of their owners.

According to an expert who specializes in the art of indigenous painting in the National Museum of Australia, because there is no cultural record of Australian aborigines in history, their culture is mostly manifested in fairy tales, songs, paintings, sculptures and customs handed down orally. Painting is a particularly important medium for recording history and spreading indigenous culture, and is regarded as an important material for understanding the historical formation and cultural development of this nation. The cave wall carvings discovered by NULLABOR in South Australia are stone murals of indigenous people, with a history of 20,000 years. These paintings not only show their understanding of nature by symbolic means, but also record their customs, deified stories and fishing and hunting life by concrete means. Therefore, Australian aboriginal painting is also called "visual culture". "Dream time" is regarded by indigenous people as the beginning of the whole world, where everything in the sky, the earth and human beings was born. At that time, there was chaos in the world, and there was only one python-the aborigines thought it was the incarnation of God. After the python fell asleep, it dreamed of land, and land appeared. Dreaming of people, people appear. So the world was created by God, and God controls the changes of everything. This understanding of nature is naturally reflected in indigenous painting art, and has become the theme that indigenous painting art has always described.

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