Kame, Emily's middle name, means "yam seed."  After rains, yam seeds emerge as large edible tubers that can extend for long distances underground.  Eventually the yams begin to push up through the dry, hard earth.  Evidence of their growth is first seen as elongated cracks hitting the earth's surface. Using wooden digging sticks, women free the yams from the earth. A prized "bush tucker" food, the yams are considered a sweet and juicy delicacy.  As a custodian of the yam, Emily conducted singing and dancing ceremonies to help replenish the species. 

By visual analysis alone, many recent Australian Aboriginal paintings could be mistaken for late abstract expressionist canvases: intriguing as compositions and making impressive use of gesture. Yet, first impressions can be revised when titles are considered. As with Emily Kngwarreye's dedication to yam dreamings, other titles speak of the journeys of an emu, or a mountain devil lizard or a roaming ancestor. A distant origin is suggested and a worldview in which, as Australian Aboriginal curator, Djon Mundine, has described it, "Every person, place, constellation, wind, cloud, plant, animal, fish, clan, dance and song in between has a value."

For thousands of years, Aboriginal painting appeared primarily on the human body, on the ground, on trees or rock walls or on ceremonial objects. Such art conveyed sacred laws derived from Dreamings, when ancestral beings animated the world. This artistic legacy is the longest continuing artistic tradition on Earth, twice as old as the cave paintings of Lascaux.

In the latest generation, Australian Aboriginal artists have contributed significantly to world art by adapting their knowledge and applying it to painted canvases. These paintings offer a new look at life on the vast stretches of the Australian continent. It also brings viewers closer to a coded system of beliefs, where some of the smallest creatures might have the biggest stories, as seen in paintings by other Utopian artists. This new episode in art history also explores the parameters of abstraction in a way that can be compared to other paintings in SAM's collection.