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This website was developed for the exhibition Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu | Past & Present Together: Fifty Years of Papunya Tula Artists that was on view at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia from 2021-23 and the Embassy of Australia in Washington, DC in 2024. It was made possible by our creative partnership with Papunya Tula Artists and the generous support of UVA Arts Council. Site design by Urban Fugitive for V21 Artspace.
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Nanyuma Napangati

Ngaminya
2020

Ngaminya is a place that features both a rockhole and a soakage. In the Tjukurrpa, a group of ancestral women camped here after travelling from Marrapinti further west. While here they gathered edible berries known as kampurarrpa (desert raisins). They can be eaten straight from the bush but are sometimes ground into a paste and made into a ball that preserves the fruit for later consumption. The circles in the painting represent these balls and probably the distinctive round boulders on the top of the Ngaminya hill formation.

Language Group: Pintupi
Date: Born 1940

Nanyuma Napangatiwas born in the vicinity of Kiwirrkurra and is the older sister of Charlie Tjapangati and Bombatu Napangati, from a family that came in from the bush in 1964. Their father was the older close brother of the well-known Papunya Tula Artist, Pinta Pinta Tjapanangka. Nanyuma began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in June 1996 and in 1999 she contributed to the Kiwirrkurra women’s painting as part of the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal. In 2000, Nanyuma traveled from Kiwirrkurra to Sydney to dance in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Are you related to this artist? Are you a scholar of artwork from the Papunya Tula movement? Please contact us at kluge-ruhe@virginia.edu if you would like to add something to this page or see something that is missing or incorrect.
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