Anooralya (Wild Yam Dreaming)

Date1995

Maker Emily Kame Kngwarray Australian Aboriginal, Anmatyerr People, Utopia, Central Desert, Northern Territory, ca. 1910 - 1996

Label TextFluid tendrils move with uncontrollable vitality across this canvas. Seen in person, each tendril is as wide as a finger or a pencil. They issue an unusual invitation—to see a part of the artist’s home that has not been depicted in painting before. Emily Kam Kngwarray is taking viewers underground to witness a spreading network of yams that tangle their way through the deep red sands of the land now known as Utopia station. She often led other women in search of these yams, which offer a reward of sweet sustenance only to those who know where and when they proliferate. Kngwarray was a respected senior custodian, or “boss,” of the knowledge embedded in her country. She devoted her life to art that was made out of ephemeral media to be viewed in ceremony, applying patterns in natural pigments on women’s bodies and on the ground. After a few years of working with the flowing wax of batik, she took up acrylic painting in the summer of 1988–89. For the last eight years of her life, she became a constant innovator, providing visions of the living landscape that she never stopped honoring. Exceptionally prolific, Knqwarray painted with a distinctive bravado. The charismatic pull of her paintings (particularly when seen face-to-face rather than in reproduction) is renowned. One can sense her physical effort, sitting on the ground and reaching across the canvas with a loaded brush, then pulling back to linger for only a moment before energetically stroking the canvas once again.

Through this painting, we are transported to the center of Australia, to a flat, windswept settlement where outsiders might see only an expanse of red dirt. Our guide is an eighty-five-year-old woman whose eyes are full of observations and who has years of experience painting bodies for ceremonies. Emily Kame Kngwarreye discovered the lush fluidity of acrylics in 1988, launching her extraordinarily prolific career that is full of bravado in handling paint. The swirling network in this painting directs us underground to explore a maze of roots produced by an anooralya, the name of the yam plant whose vigorous growth is evident here. Kngwarreye was a custodian of knowledge of this resourceful plant.

Object number2000.157

ProvenanceCommissioned by Delmore Gallery, sold to Gondwana and purchased by Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan from Gondwana Gallery in 1996

Photo CreditPhoto: Paul Macapia

This is my country, this is me.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Exhibition HistoryWashington, D.C., National Museum of Women in the Arts, Dreaming Their Way: Aboriginal Australian Women Painters, June 30 - Dec. 10, 2006. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection, May 31 - Sept. 12, 2012 (Nashville, Tenessee, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, June 23 - Oct. 15, 2017; Madison, Wisconsin, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Jan. 26 - Apr. 22, 2018; Austin, Texas, Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, June 3 - Sept. 9, 2018; Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, Audain Art Museum, Oct. 5, 2018 - Jan. 28, 2019). Text by Pamela McClusky, Wally Caruana, Lisa Graziose Corrin, and Stephen Gilchrist. Cat. no. 12, pp. 76-77, reproduced.Published ReferencesIshikawa, Chiyo et al., Seattle Art Museum Downtown, Seattle, Washington: Seattle Art Museum, 2007; reproduced p. 41. Ishikawa, Chiyo, ed., A Community of Collectors: 75th Anniversary Gifts to the Seattle Art Museum. Seattle. Washington: Seattle Art Museum, 2007; reproduced p. 77. Seattle Art Museum: Bridging Cultures, London: Scala Publishers Ltd. for the Seattle Art Museum, 2007; pp. 38-39, reproduced p. 38.

Credit LineGift of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan

Dimensions59 13/16 x 48 1/16 in. (152 x 122 cm)

MediumSynthetic polymer paint on canvas