Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Mina Mina Dreaming)
1999
Yuendumu Women's Collaborative (Biddy Napanangka Hutchinson, b. 1931; Betsy Napangardi Lewis, b. 1940; Judy Napangardi Watson, b. 1925; Rosie Nangala Flemming, b. 1930; Amanda Nangala Jurra, n.d.; Bessie Nakamarra Sims, b. 1932; and Pamela Napurrurla Walker, b. 1957)
Australian Aboriginal, Warlpiri people, Yuendumu, Western Desert, Northern Territory
Seven women offer us this vision of their Mina Mina (home or living place). It is a place where ancestral women stopped to sit under desert oaks, get water, collect food and snake vines to wrap food bowls and cure headaches. As part of a commissioned painting process, the women all journeyed together to the site. Just as in mythic eras, they stopped to gather goannas, grubs, bush tobacco and fruits. Fires were lit to drive away the blue-tongued lizards that often sit under spinifex grass, and there they could roast food and sing quietly into the night.
Key elements as noted in the painting’s documentation:
• Long wavy lines= snake vines
• U-forms= women
• Concentric circles= desert oak trees
• Straight lines= digging sticks
• Small circles= edible fungus
• IUO forms= coolamon (gathering bowls)
--Pam McClusky, Curator of African and Oceanic Art, 2012
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
59 1/16 x 47 1/4 in. (150 x 120 cm)
Gift of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan
2019.20.21
Provenance: [Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, Yuendumu, Australia]; Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan, Seattle, Washington, 2000
Photo: iocolor, Seattle
