Nyapanyapa Yunupingu (1945 – 20 October 2021) was an Australian Yolngu painter and printmaker who lived and worked in the community at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Yunupingu created works of art that drastically diverge from the customs of the Yolngu people and made waves within the art world as a result. Due to this departure from tradition within her oeuvre, Yunupingu's work had varying receptions from within her community and the broader art world.
Early life
Yunupingu was a Yolŋu woman of the Gumatj clan and was born in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, in 1945.[1] She was the daughter of Yolŋu artist and cultural leader Munggurrawuy Yunupingu (c.1905–1979), who was involved with the Yirrkala bark petitions.[2] Yunupingu's father taught her how to paint, allowing her to watch as he created various works.[3] In a conversation between Nyapanyapa Yunupingu and Will Stubbs, Yunupingu discussed how her father taught her to paint. He told her:
Daughter, see this, you will do this in the future.[3]
Nyapanyapa's best form of communication is her art. This is because she is deaf, doesn’t speak English, is otherwise not that verbal, doesn't belong to a culture which believes it is necessary to talk at length about art unless in regard to its sacred character, doesn't paint sacred art, does not have a sense of herself as an individual as distinct from her kinship group, does not have a sense of herself as an important artist, and does not have an interest in talking about herself.[9]
Growing up, Yunupingu worked on the mission with her sisters, herding dairy cattle and goats.[2] She learned to paint by watching her father's painting process, although he did not officially pass on Miny'tji designs to her.[10]
Art career
Yunupingu worked through the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre at Yirrkala. She developed a close relationship with Will Stubbs, the art coordinator at Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre at Yirrkala. He helped to push her creatively and encourage her art.[11]
Initial foray into painting
Yunupingu began painting at The Yirrkala Printspace in 2007, beginning to work daily in the centre's outdoor courtyard. Her presence eventually attracted a group of artists to join her (dubbed the "Courtyard Ladies") which included Barrupu Yunupingu, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Nongirrna Marawili, Mulkun Wirrpanda, and Dhuwarrwarr Marika.[10] Yunupingu was a part of a movement at Yirrkala towards secularism in their art with this group.[12] Yunupingu made screen prints at first, focusing on a figurative visual style.[11] Yunupingu's early work dealt with personal stories and experiences, creating narratives that were not inspired by ancestral stories or dreamings but rather by her own life or her family history.[10] Her work met with much success with her breakout painting Incident at Mutpi 1975, 2008, which featured a depiction of her being mauled by a buffalo. The Mulka Project created a film to go along with the piece and the painting and film won the 2008 Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award.[10] Yunupingu was inspired to create this work by Will Stubbs, who presented her with a large bark before the creation of Incident at Mutpi 1975.[11]
Mayilimiriw ("meaningless") paintings
In 2009, after a dream in which the buffalo that had mauled Yunupingu in 1975 appeared to her, she vowed to never again paint a depiction of the traumatic event. She began instead for a period to create paintings that were devoid of figurative images. Rather, they focused on layering coloured cross-hatching, creating an artistic style that centred around the nature of creation in the moment.[13] Nyapanyapa's abstraction in her mayilimiriw paintings may not seem to mean anything, but she was a highly ceremonial person and this work can still be tied to ideas of country and ancestral tradition.[11]
White paintings
Yunupingu's "white paintings" take this concept of mayilimiriw further. Produced from 2009–2010, this series of paintings are solely focused on rhythmic mark-making, excluding colour from the narrative and instead creating works that were uninhibited in their spontaneous nature. Rather than being a premeditated image, Yunupingu's resulting work was fully dependent on the moment, the texture and stroke varying depending on material factors such as the brush and paint she was using.[10]
Yunupingu's paintings
Whilst most of her work falls into the category of mayilimiriw, Yunupingu has created newer works which do contain figurative references. Specifically, she has included Ganyu (stars), which refer to the story of the seven sisters.[10] Nyapanyapa created "The Seven Sisters Collaboration" with her seven sisters in 2012. This collection contained prints from each sister, which when brought together in a constellation form "The Seven Sisters Collaboration." The prints all emphasize each sister's individual style, while also coming together under a common theme.[14]
Process
Yunupingu did not draft or plot her paintings, instead she relied on spontaneity and texture to create her works. Throughout her career as an artist she transitioned from creating razor-incised carvings of animals and spirits, to linocut prints, to bark paintings, and recently multimedia projections.[2] Within her mayilimiriw paintings, Yunupingu created a structure to work from by adding in circles, lines, and shapes which she then surrounded with crosshatching, using red, pink, and white earth pigments.[10]
In 2008, Yunupingu won the Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Prize at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards with a piece that combined painting on eucalyptus bark with video to narrate a biographic event in which she was gored by a buffalo in 1975. Her paintings of being gored by a buffalo were the inspiration and backdrop for Nyapanyapa, a dance choreographed by Stephen Page for Bangarra Dance Theatre which toured the United States.[16]
Starting on 23 May 2020 (later than scheduled owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia) and running until 25 October 2020,[19] a comprehensive solo exhibition of Yunupingu's work, the moment eternal: Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu, was mounted at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. The exhibition featured more than 60 works, and was the first solo exhibition at MAGNT to feature work by an Aboriginal Australian artist.[20] A catalogue to accompany the exhibition was published.[21]
In 2021, Yunupingu won the Wynne Prize for Garak – Night Sky, and the National Gallery of Australia purchased two of her works for inclusion in Part Two of the Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now exhibition.[22] Yunupingu died in Yirrkala on 20 October 2021.[23]
In 2022, Yunupingu's work was displayed in the Madayin exhibition. This exhibition traveled to various cities at museums across the United States, continuing to 2025.[24]
Reception of art
While Yunupingu's art has received many accolades and has seen success internationally, there is a certain level of puzzlement over her success within her own community. Her paintings diverge from tradition and do not depict the traditional stories and dreamings of her people, nor their Minytji designs, thus they are seen by those within the culture as having "no power" and as something that is communicating purely with the Western art market rather than the Yolngu people.[10] Despite this hesitancy within her own community, Yunupingu was trailblazing a new approach to art within her culture, creating a style and approach that is strictly her own. The criticism Yunupingu has faced about her "meaningless" paintings is relative, and some understand how she is an artist who is always tying her art back to ideas of country.[11]
2012: Crossing Cultures: The Owen and Wagner Collection of Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Art at the Hood Museum of Art.Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.[31][32]
^ abcdSkerritt, Henry F., 1979– éditeur intellectuel. Baum, Tina, auteur. (2016). Marking the infinite : contemporary women artists from Aboriginal Australia : from the Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection : Nonggirrnga Marawili, Wintjiya Napaltjarri, Yukultji Napangati, Angelina Pwerle, Carlene West, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Lena Yarinkura, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Nyapanyapa Yunupingu. Nevada Museum of Art. ISBN978-3-7913-5591-7. OCLC980860631.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ abWan̲ambi, Wukun̲; McDonald, Kade; Skerritt, Henry F.; Blake, Andrew; University of Virginia, eds. (2022). Maḏayin: Waltjan̲ ga Waltjan̲buy Yolnuwu Miny'tji Yirrkalawuy = Eight decades of Aboriginal Australian bark painting from Yirrkala. Charlottesville: Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia. ISBN978-1-63681-055-3.
^ abcdeSprague, Quentin. “White Lines: The Recent Work of Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.” Discipline 3 (Winter 2013)
^Skerritt, Henry F. "The Country Speaks Through Her." Nongirrnga Marawili: From my Heart and Mind, edited by Cara Pinchbeck (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2018)
^Hood Museum of Art (2012). Crossing cultures : the Owen and Wagner collection of contemporary aboriginal Australian art at the Hood Museum of Art. Gilchrist, Stephen,, Butler, Sally. Hanover, New Hampshire. ISBN978-0-944722-44-2. OCLC785870480.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Salvestro, Denise Yvonne (April 2016). Printmaking by Yolngu artists of Northeast Arnhem Land: 'Another way of telling our stories' (PhD). Australian National University.
