Yukultji Napangati facts for kids

Yukultji Napangati is an important Aboriginal Australian artist. She is a painter who works with the Papunya Tula group of artists. Yukultji is one of the many talented female painters who followed the first male Papunya Tula artists.

Who is Yukultji Napangati?

Yukultji Napangati was born in the early 1970s, north of Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia. For the first part of her life, she lived as a nomad with her family. This meant they moved around a lot, learning about their land, its plants, animals, and seasons.

After her family met people from outside their traditional way of life, she began to learn about the modern world. This experience later led her to become a painter. Today, Yukultji is a well-known Aboriginal artist whose work is seen all over the world.

Yukultji's Family and Early Life

Yukultji is the daughter of Nanu Nangala and Lanti Yukulti. She has many brothers and sisters. Her family was part of a nomadic Pintupi tribe. While many Pintupi people were forced to leave their land, Yukultji's family managed to live far away from others.

They were known as the “lost tribe” or the Pintupi Nine. They lived in the bush, following old ways of life. They hunted and gathered food, living completely separate from the outside world. Yukultji grew up without knowing about places like Kiwirrkurra or her relatives who lived there. She had never met anyone from outside her small tribe.

Her family lived a very traditional life, eating bush plants, kangaroo, and goanna. Her father had briefly lived at a Christian mission in Balgo. But he decided to return to the desert and kept his family far from towns. Yukultji's father passed away around 1980.

The family finally met outsiders in October 1984. They then settled in Kiwirrkurra. Coming out of the bush, they became famous as "the last nomads" of the desert. This event was big news at the time. Yukultji was 14 years old and the youngest in the group.

Adjusting to a New World

After her family came out of the desert, they were introduced to a completely new way of life. Yukultji felt a big culture shock when she first left the desert. She often found new things hard to understand.

She once shared a memory: "I hopped into a car and crouched down, and I saw the trees move. I was frightened. I was scared. I jumped right off because the trees were racing around the place." During this time, she saw white people for the first time, started wearing clothes, and began eating European food.

Yukultji later married Charlie Ward Tjakamarra. They had a daughter and a son together. After Charlie passed away, Yukultji was inspired to become more involved with art.

Papunya Tula Artists: A Creative Community

Napangati started painting in the 1990s at the Papunya Tula Arts Center. This center was created in November 1972. It became well known because groups of senior men began painting on anything they could find. This led to the creation of a community art organization.

John Kean, an art advisor, said that Papunya Tula painting came from the meeting of Indigenous culture with European ideas about art. The art center shows the culture, history, and traditions of their community through creativity. Being together as a community and family is very important to the Papunya Tula Artists.

In 1996, Yukultji began painting with a group of women at the art center. This group included her mothers and sisters. These women were joining a community of painters that had mostly been men before. Yukultji had watched her brothers and husband paint and decided to try it herself. The women sat in circles, talked, and painted together. They learned from each other and from the men. They shared old ancestral stories while painting on canvas. For the first time, the women had the freedom to change Western Desert art and share more of their Tjukurrpa knowledge, which became their creative ideas.

Yukultji's Unique Art Style

Napangati's art often uses very few colors, which creates a shimmering effect. Her main subject is "country," meaning the land. Her paintings show the harsh conditions of the desert. The dots and waves in her art shimmer like stars and sand.

Her work often refers to Yunarla, a place west of Kiwirrkurra. She spent time there camping and collecting roots with other women. The lines, colors, and movement in her paintings show the features of these special places. Her art reflects the landscapes and how important they are.

Cara Pinchbeck, who has studied Napangati's work, said, "Yukultji's paintings do not try to explain the landscape but give a feeling of how huge and important it is." Napangati also paints the stories and songs from her and her mother's Dreaming. These stories are about her traditional country, around Marruwa, Ngaminya, and Marrapinti.

By the early 2000s, Yukultji had become very skilled. She developed a unique style and grew more confident in her art. She used lines and colors to create patchwork effects that covered the whole canvas. Her designs often use circles within circles to show how everything is connected, both in her art and in her country.

Yukultji's Global Recognition

Yukultji's paintings are displayed in many public collections in Australia. Her work has also been shown in over 80 exhibitions in Australia and other countries.

In 2009, Napangati traveled to New York for her own exhibition at Salon 94. This show was a huge success for her career.

She was a finalist for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA awards) in 2006, 2009, 2010, and 2011.

In 2012, Napangati won the Alice Prize, an award for Australian artists in Alice Springs.

In 2018, she won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting.

Also in 2018, Napangati's art was part of an exhibition called Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia at The Phillips Collection.

In 2019, US rapper Jay-Z bought one of Napangati's artworks. This painting was featured in an Instagram post by his wife Beyoncé in July 2021. The post received 3.5 million likes in just one week!

Where to See Her Art

Yukultji Napangati's art is held in many important collections, including:

• Art Gallery of New South Wales
• Griffith University Art Museum
• Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge
• Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College
• Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia
• Milwaukee Art Museum
• National Gallery of Australia
• National Gallery of Victoria
• Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art
• Seattle Art Museum
• Toledo Museum of Art