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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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Yuyuya Nampitjinpa

Yumari
2019

Yumari is a rockhole situated in a large area of sandhills in Western Australia. In the Tjukurrpa, a large group of ancestral women traveled from Yumari to another rockhole called Pinari. As they traveled they gathered kampurarrpa (desert raisins). These berries can be eaten straight from the bush, but they are also sometimes ground into a paste and rolled into a ball for preservation and later consumption. One of these women separated from the group and had intercourse with the trickster Yina (the “Old Man”). This broke a sacred taboo because in desert kinship terms the woman would be considered his mother-in-law. For this transgression, his penis is attacked by a swarm of ants. The name of the site, Yumari, literally translates as “mother-in-law.”

Language Group: Pintupi
Date: Born c. 1946

Yuyuya Nampitjinpa was born west of Muyinnga in Western Australia, just over the Northern Territory border around 1946. Her family, with her brothers Ronnie and Smithy Zimran (Yari Yari) Tjampitjinpa, moved to Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) during the 1950s and later to the newly formed Papunya community. In 1994 she was one of the women who participated in the Haasts Bluff/Kintore Canvas Project. Yuyuya Nampitjinpa had spoken to her brother Ronnie Tjampitjinpa, a renowned Papunya Tula artist, to get permission to paint Ngurrapalangu. This large collaborative canvas would be acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1999 Yuyuya contributed to the Kintore women’s painting as part of the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal.

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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