Wintjiya Napaltjarri is a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia’s Western Desert region. Her paintings typically use an iconography that represents the eggs of the flying ant and hair-string skirts. A finalist in the 2007 and 2008 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, her work is held in several public collections.
About Wintjiya Napaltjarri in brief
Wintjiya Napaltjarri is a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia’s Western Desert region. Her paintings typically use an iconography that represents the eggs of the flying ant and hair-string skirts. A finalist in the 2007 and 2008 National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards, her work is held in several of Australia’s public collections. She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napalt Jarri, the two women being the second and third wives of Toba Tjakamarra, father of one of the prominent founders of the Papunya Tula art movement, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula. She had five children with Toba, and taught her granddaughter to chase and capture goannas. Wintjiyan is sometimes referred to as Wintjia NapaltJarri No. 1; there is another artist from the same region, Wintje Morgan Napaljarri, who is known as Winjiya No. 2.
She came from an area north-west or north-east of Walungurru, west of Alice Springs, and speaks almost no English. She was born in about 1923; the Art Gallery of New South Wales suggests 1932; expert Vivien Johnson reports two possible years: 1932 or 1934. The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians have a different conception of time, often estimating dates by comparisons with the occurrence of other events. In the 1970s and ’90s, such work was being exhibited internationally. The first artists, including all of the founders. of the papunya tula company, were men, and there was resistance among the Pint upi women to women painting. However, many of the women wished to participate, and in the 1990s many of them began to paint on the western desert.
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This page is based on the article Wintjiya Napaltjarri published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
