Yunarla

2010

Australian Aboriginal, Pintupi people, Kiwirrkura, Western Desert, Western Australia, born ca. 1970

Tangled vines form this painting’s core and inspired its title. Yunarla is a bush banana, also known as “silky pear vine.” It is also a rockhole and soakage site that the artist remembers as a place where ancestral women camped and replenished their energy. When she was fourteen, Yukultji was the youngest of nine Pintupi people who walked into a remote community center. This group was the last of their people to be living independently in the region and to make contact with nonindigenous Australians. Beginning to paint in the late 1990s, Yukultji continues to recount her memories of walking around vast regions between the Gibson and Great Sandy Deserts.

Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

42 1/8 x 48 1/16 in. (107 x 122 cm)

Gift of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan

2019.20.7

Photo: iocolor, Seattle

Now on view at the Seattle Art Museum

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, 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. 28, pp. 108-109, reproduced.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Honoring 50 Years of Papunya Tula Painting, Apr. 15, 2022 - ongoing.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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