Kayi Kayi Nampitjinpa is one of an extraordinary group of women artists from the Western Desert who began painting in the 1990s. The Western Desert art movement began with the establishment of the Papunya Tula Artist Cooperative in 1972 at the small community of Papunya, 240km north-west of Alice Springs. While women were excluded from Papunya Tula in the early years, in the 1980s they began assisting their husbands and male relatives on their canvasses, and by the 1990s were painting their own ceremonial stories and recognised as important artists.
Nampitjinpa was born at Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia at a time when Pintupi had little or no contact with the outside world. During the 1960s Pintupi people were forcibly removed from their homelands and resettled at Papunya. As part of the outstation movement, in the early 1980s Kayi Kayi, with her husband Billy Nolan Tjapangarti, returned to her traditional Country and settled at Kintore, near the Western Australian border. Nampitjinpa painted alongside her husband at Kintore before beginning to paint independently after participating in the Haasts Bluff/Kintore women’s painting project in 1994.
Kayi Kayi Nampitjinpa
born c. 1946, Pintupi
Untitled (Marrapinti water soakage site) 2000
synthetic polymer paint on linen
122.5 x 137.5 cm
Purchased 2000 (P 2000/0852)
© Kayi Kayi Nampitjinpa and Papunya Tula Artists
Nampitjinpa has the custodial rights to paint the Dreaming Stories relating to her Country at Kiwirkurra. Her work Untitled (Marrapinti water soakage site) 2000 represents the rock hole and soakage water site of Marrapinti, in the sandhill country west of Kiwirrkurra. This sacred site is associated with the Ancestral Women who travelled through this region:
“The arcs represent hills in the vicinity of the site. A large group of women camped at this site digging for the edible tubers, known as yunala, from the bush banana vine. They also collected the fruit known as pura or bush tomato from the small shrub solanum chippendalei. The women later travelled east to Kiwirrkurra and then north-east to Lake MacKay.” [i]
While Western Desert painting is often associated with bright bold colours, Napitjimpa’s work is limited to cream and ochre, creating an all-over, shimmering field of dots. The tactile earthiness of the deep ochre background evokes the desert landscape while the designs refer to ceremonial body designs worn by women. The effect is subtle and refined, the painting both formally constrained and conceptually rich in the sacred knowledge encoded within it.
Kayi Kayi Nampitjinpa’s work has been acquired for the collection of public institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
[i] Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd documentation certificate, 2001.