Konstantina Birrung Ngura | Belonging to Country Appartenir à la terre

The Arts d’Australie • Stéphane Jacob gallery is pleased to present Konstantina | Birrung Ngura – Belonging to Country, Appartenir à la terre, a monographic exhibition dedicated to the Aboriginal artist Konstantina, a Gadigal woman of the Eora Nation.

Through her work, Konstantina reveals the intimate and living relationship her people maintain with the land, a territory that stretches from the current Sydney Opera House to South Head and Watsons Bay.

Her works translate both ancestral memory and a contemporary reading of the landscape, highlighting the continuity and reinvention of ancestral knowledge.

EXHIBITION FOREWORD Through her artistic practice, Konstantina explores the intimate and enduring link between Aboriginal peoples and their territory, revealing the continuity, renewal, and cultural resilience of ancestral knowledge.

Her contemporary visual language reinterprets the traditional signs and dot-painting of her ancestors, offering a modern narrative that helps to better understand that First Nations peoples are an integral part of Australia's social and environmental fabric.

Guided by a deep commitment to language, culture, and history, Konstantina restores narratives often obscured or disrupted by colonisation, offering a vibrant and poetic reading of Gadigal stories and establishing a dialogue between memory, tradition, and representation of the modern world.

Konstantina is currently collaborating with the British Museum on a research project dedicated to Gadigal objects held in its collections. This work will lead to an exhibition planned for 2027 in London, titled Gadigal Yilabara Wala - Gadigal Now and Then.

These researches also nourish her practice and inspire some of the series presented in the gallery's exhibition. The exhibition title directly refers to the profound relationship Aboriginal peoples have with their territory. En langu