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SHARED SKIES
A long-term India–Australia collaboration connecting continents through the night sky
Contemporary art meets ancient knowledge, shaping shared futures across skies.
What do we feel when we look at the stars? First Lights / Shared Skies is a long-term India–Australia collaboration where contemporary art becomes a bridge between ancient knowledge and future imaginaries. Rooted in the universal human instinct to look up, the initiative connects continents through the night sky. Led by Fremantle Biennale, sā Ladakh Biennale, and the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation, the project brings together art, science, technology, and First Nations ways of seeing—exploring how local knowledge systems can shape global understanding today.
Dark Skies as Cultural Archives
At the heart of Shared Skies are the Dark Sky Reserves of India and Australia—rare environments where the night sky remains visible in its full depth. These are not only ecological sanctuaries but also cultural ones. For over 60,000 years, Aboriginal communities in Australia have read the sky as a living map—guiding ceremony, storytelling, and life. In India, ākāśa (sky) carries deep philosophical and cosmological meaning, with astronomical traditions tracing back to early civilizations. This collaboration brings these parallel knowledge systems into dialogue—through artistic exchange, technological innovation, and shared inquiry.
The project unfolds through a layered process of exchange and co-creation: residencies in Ladakh and Western Australia; digital and in-person artistic exchange; and collaboration between artists, scientists, and technologists. Artists across career stages come together to shape a dialogue that is interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and deeply rooted in place. As part of this process, participating artists such as Jigmet Angmo, a contemporary visual artist from Ladakh, and Kirli Saunders, an author and artist from Australia, engage with local communities in both regions—collecting stories, perspectives, and cultural narratives connected to the night sky, which inform the evolving artistic outcomes of the project.
Over the next two years, Shared Skies will culminate in a series of large-scale, place-responsive light constellations across India and Australia. These works will take shape as: Choreographed drone light installations; Site-specific immersive experiences; Sky-based storytelling across geographies. Blending cutting-edge drone technology with ancestral knowledge systems, these constellations reimagine the sky as a shared cultural canvas.
Across continents, the same sky holds different stories. At a time of ecological urgency and cultural fragmentation, Shared Skies invites us to pause, look up, and reconnect.
Not just to the sky—but to each other.
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Shared Skies is supported by CAIR: Centre for Australia–India Relations through the Commonwealth of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and is enriched through engagement with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations.