






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.

YUYUYA NAMPITJINPA, Yumari, 2019
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas. 24 × 21 5/8 in. (61 × 55 cm). Commissioned by Richard Klingler and Jane Slatter for Irriṯitja Kuwarri Tjungu | Past and Present Together.
© estate of the artist licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd for Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd.

Yuyuya Nampitjinpa at Papunya Tula Artists Walungurru Studio, 2007.
Photo by Fred Myers.