Umari

Label

Along with Naata Nungurryai, Wintjiya and Tjunkiya Napaltjarri were two of the first women to start painting for Papunya tyula Artists. At the encouragement of the art center, the sisters began their painting careers working collaboratively, reveling in the shared opportunity to depict the country of their youth. Many of their early paintings focused on the women’s site of Umari, where in ancestral times a forbidden sexual relationship initiated between a man and a woman who were in the Pintupi kinship system were considered to be mother-in-law and son-in-law. The punishment for this transgression was death. The retelling of the Umari narrative is a reminder of the importance of adhering to the proper kinship system.

Wintjiya and Tjunkiya’s early works were almost indistinguishable, but gradually the two women developed their own highly distinctive styles. The paintings shown here are classic examples of both women’s mature styles, demonstrating the graphic boldness that distinguishes them from other women painters at Walungurru (Kintore). Wintjiya builds up the surface of the canvas with layer upon layer of overlapping cream dots. Tjunkiya, in contrast, depicts Umari using her characteristic palette of vivid oranges and black, scratching into the paint surface with the metallic ferrule of her brush. This process mimics the way in which white ochre is used in ceremonies to encase body paint on naked breasts and arms.

From the 2019 exhibition A World of Relations, guest curated by Henry Skerritt, Mellon Curator of Indigenous Arts of Australia at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia

Course History

ANTH 15, Political Anthropology, Elena Turevon, Fall 2019

Exhibition History

A World of Relations, Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 17-December 8, 2019.

Provenance

Papunya Tula Artists Pty. Ltd., Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia (Certificate of Authenticity); sold to Will Owen (1952-2015) and Harvey Wagner (1931-2017), Chapel Hill, North Carolina, January 17, 2003; given to present collection, 2011.

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