Ancestral Women at Yunala

Yukultji Napangati, a member of the Pintupi peoples, gives form to her personal, ancestral, and physical relationship to the lands on which she has lived her entire life, in the harsh interior of Australia. Ancestral Women at Yunala consists of synthetic polymer paints in black, cream, and orange on canvas. Its composition is built out of short, vertical strokes running from side to side, stacked so as to appear to form continuous lines that span the length of the canvas. As its title suggests, the painting is triagulates ancestral traditions, the relationship between Aboriginal women, both real and mythic, to the natural world, and the specific site of Yunala, a rock hole and water soakage west of Kiwirrkurra. According to the stories passed down from generation to generation, a group of women stopped at Yunkala on their way to Wilkinkarra, and while there, they collected the edible roots of the bush banana or silky pear vine. The hatched composition of Ancestral Women at Yunala is meant to represent the shimmering desert landscape and the shifting sands of this region of Australia as well as the underground roots that sustain its botanical life and the animating presence of ancestors.