Superhighway: Country Sings to Stars Dancing
Superhighway speaks to the vast living networks that have continuously existed across Countries; connecting Cultures and knowledge. It is a vortex of memory, movement and energy, guiding our purposes into the future.
Image: Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) 2027 Collaborative Hero Artwork Commission: Superhighway – Country Sings to Stars Dancing. Digital mixed media. Created with Red Ochre Republic by First Nations designers Tarquin Singleton (Yirrganydji) and Sheree Jacobs (Meriam), with creative contributions from CIAF Artistic Director, Teho Ropeyarn (Angkamuthi and Yadhaykana) and artists Peggy Kasabad Lane (Saibai Koedal Awgadhalgal), Jack Wilkie-Jans (Waanyi, Teppathiggi and Tjungundji), Sandra Delaney (Nunagal, Goenbal and Ngugi, Quandamooka), Douglas Tamwoy (Thupmul Clan, Gudang Yadhaykenu Tribe, Badu & Erub Islands), Daphne de Jersey (Gangalidda, Waanyi and Garawa) and Sabrina Rose-Toby (Gangulu).
"Our cultural information highway brings the old ways through to new expressions, across generations, technologies and practices. "
Superhighway speaks to the vast living networks that have continuously existed across Countries; connecting Cultures and knowledge. It is a vortex of memory, movement and energy, guiding our purposes into the future. The theme Superhighway beckons us towards deep time and infinity. It is our divine duty to care for, and contribute to, our infinite keeping place.
The phrase “Country Sings to Stars Dancing” evokes the connection of our lands, seas and skies. Through this interconnectivity, First Nations peoples continue to learn from this ‘mirror world’– it is the wisdom written in the cosmos reflecting the memories held by Country.
Our cultural information highway brings the old ways through to new expressions, across generations, technologies and practices. Here, Culture is not a commodity, it is a responsibility; a living system of knowledge, values, relationships and beliefs.
Superhighway holds the tension between memory and motion, tradition and transformation. This is the story of resilience and continuity, of dancing through the seasons of time. It is a reminder of where we come from, who we are, and where we are headed.
CIAF Artistic Director, Teho Ropeyarn.
Teho Ropeyarn, CIAF Artistic Director
Superhighway: Country Sings to Stars Dancing speaks to the infinite and sophisticated knowledge systems that we hold as First Nations people.
The theme was developed by CIAF cultural curatorium, Peggy Kasabad Lane (Saibai Koedal Awgadhalgal), and Jack Wilkie-Jans (Waanyi, Teppathiggi and Tjungundji).
A reference to Yothu Yindi’s song Superhighway, this theme has a sense of release, projecting outwardly into the wide world and into the sky as we reach the stars beyond; a future unknown, a universe unknown.
When I think of this Superhighway, I think of this energy field, an invisible galactic parade representing our cultural information highway that channels our sensibilities between Country: land, water and sky. It is this knowledge field, our blood memory, which is part of our cultural data that is designed in our DNA, where we not only belong to, but are made of, Country.
The phrase Country Sings to Stars Dancing is also a poetic gesture that celebrates our cultural practices around song, dance and singing, with stories reflecting on themes such as ‘beforetime’ stories and practices, histories, movement, work-life and industries, the sea, the land and the sky, animals, nature and place.
The theme speaks about our future positioning, our connectivity beyond what is in front of us. What is there for the future to hold on to?
We ask artists to reflect on these superhuman qualities and what makes us so special to the many nations we belong to, framed by waterways, seas and the open sky, in the state they call Queensland.
Peggy Kasabad Lane
Peggy Kasabad Lane, Writer & Curator
Saibai Koedal Awgadhalgal
Since time immemorial, ancient knowledge has moved through the universe. Stardust falling into oceans is guided by the sea currents and winds–rising to the shores, travelling through rivers, lakes and mountaintops. Within this movement, a living knowledge system is held. First Nations peoples are intrinsically linked to this system of life. It is us. We are it. Layered through memory and beyond, it becomes who we are and who we will be.
For the 2027 Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF), Artistic Director, Teho Ropeyarn (Angkamuthi and Yadhaykana), extends an offering, an invitation to enter this vast network of knowledge and walk with the theme Superhighway: Country Sings to Stars Dancing. This theme recognises the pathways that connect us across time and space, layering the multiple levels of connectivity and continuum. These pathways are not new; they pulse within our kulka, carried forward by generations who have travelled this cultural highway of knowledge.
In recent years, CIAF has urged us to Pay Attention!, to Reclaim and to Regenerate. Now we’re asked to analyse, to dive deeply, and to recognise that the cultural Superhighway already exists within us. Before moving forward we must look back to our Ancestors who mapped the stars, read the tides, shaped the land, and encoded knowledge in song, dance, carving, weaving, painting, and storytelling.
The journey may seem slow, but it is fast. The urgency is real. We must act to honour our Ancestors, prepare future generations and build cultural places that may be physical, metaphorical, spiritual, and digital to safeguard our practices, rituals, dances, stories, and songs. These places ensure continuity in a rapidly shifting world and strengthen the cultural future of our kazil.
Superhighway: Country Sings to Stars Dancing is more than a theme, it’s a call to move with intention, respect and courage along the pathways our Ancestors laid out.
Jack Wilkie-Jans
Jack Wilkie-Jans, Artist & Writer
The Cairns Indigenous Art Fair 2027’s theme, Superhighway: Country Sings to Stars Dancing, immediately evokes a sense of wonder and majesty of First Nations storytelling and knowledge-keeping traditions. Not only are these practices timeless, but they’re also ever evolving and protected—yet, under threat.
Superhighway—a learned nod by Artistic Director, Teho Ropeyarn, to Yothu Yindi’s immense cultural influence, and influences—represents our peoples’ and totemic counterparts’ incredible wisdom to listen to the Earth and the Elements (and Spirits), to nurture what would be the world’s first ‘information highway’ in every respect. This by which we navigated, traded, learned, dreamt, and remembered knowledge of kin, practical and spiritual and existential purpose.
Today, with all new (and old) technologies, we only add to our Superhighway, to our super-strength as Sovereign and to our collective and irrepressible knowledge-banks. As always, for future generations, we traverse the trials and tribulations of our times and take stock and keep record. This is what we do as artists and as Cultural Practitioners: Every piece we create carries some element of our Superhighway knowledge; those pieces carry this forth to wherever across the globe they go.
This impact, this sustained presence on Earth, adds to our peoples and is reflected in the stars far away; for they glitter back to us an embracing Motherly and Fatherly light. Those dancing stars represent our wildest dreams and boundless love, our immense memory and living Lore, as it’s all part and parcel of the fabric of our Universe. And, through the art, colour, form, and vision of the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair’s artists, is manifests as a celebratory vortex of beauty, skill, intention, joy, story, safety and might, humanity, and our evergreen excellence.
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