Wintjiya Napaltjarri

Wintjiya Napaltjarri was born in the early 1930s near the swamp at Malparingya, northwest of Walungurru, in the Northern Territory of Australia. In her twenties she joined the migration of Western Desert Pintupi people to the Lutheran mission at Haast’s Bluff. The local pastor encouraged Napaltjarri to paint and, after a sporadic artistic journey, she began to paint regularly in a collaborative practice with a small group of women for Papunya Tula Artists in 1995. Solo practice ensued; she painted her deep connection to her mother's dreaming, as it was passed on to her.

This canvas’ bold iconography depicts Watanuma, an ancient soakage site close to Kintore in the Northern Territory. The ancestral Minyma Kutjarra (Two Women) journeyed to this place and, in their travels, imbued the surrounding natural environment with meaning. Through the ceremonies and rituals relating to the spiritual legacy of Minyma Kutjarra, Pintupi women share knowledge of menstruation, womanhood, courtship, love, pregnancy, and childbirth. Napaltjarri’s monochromatic palette depicts these ceremonies; the slashes represent nulla-nullas, or digging sticks, and the floating, comb-like shapes represent nyimparra (hair-string skirts).

“The props of ceremony dancing sticks and hair string are depicted by elongated bars and drawn-out loops. In ceremonial dances such objects were used to embody the women’s travel and progression through life; at times symbolizing the umbilical cord or used to imitate the action of piercing a woman’s nasal septum as she transitions to womanhood.” (Henry F. Skerritt (ed.), Marking the infinite : Contemporary women artists from Aboriginal Australia : from the Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection, Reno, NV : Nevada Museum of Art ; Munich : DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2016, p.56)