DOROTHY NAPANGARDI - SANDHILLS OF MINA MINA

 DOROTHY NAPANGARDI
SANDHILLS OF MINA MINA,  2008
91 x 91 cm
Acrylic on linen
 
PROVENANCE
Yuendumu, NT
Gallery Gondwana, NTPrivate Collection, NTCooee Art Gallery, NSW 
 
STORY
This painting depicts a major women's ceremonial site known as Mina Mina, the artist's custodial country, located near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory of Australia. During the Jukurrpa Ancestral women of the Napangardi and Napanangka sub-section groups (aunt/niece relationship, in which knowledge is passed from one to the other) gathered to collect ceremonial digging sticks (karlangu) that had emerged from the ground. They then proceeded east, performing rituals of song and dance, to the place known as Jankinyi. A large belt of trees (Casuarina Decaisneana) now stand where these digging sticks once were. This painting shows yet another development in the ever-evolving style of Dorothy Napangardi. As with all of this artist's works, this painting revolves around the sacred site of Mina Mina, the land in the remote Tanami Desert to which Dorothy iscustodial owner. Made up of two enormous soakage areas and endless sandhills, here Dorothy and her Aunts (Napanangkas) perform rituals of dance and song as part of their passing on of Jukurrpa. Like the sandhills in constant flux around and through the artist's country so too does this painting move, backwards and forwards, the rippling effect produced so like that of the wind's tracks in the sand.