Ceremony at Dhanaya

Ms N. Yunupiŋu was born into an influential cultural and creative family.  Like her sister, the artist Gulumbu Yunupiŋu, she was taught to paint by her father, Muŋgurrawuy Yunupiŋu. By painting her memories and experiences, Yunupiŋu deviates from Yolŋu tradition, in that the content of her works of art is more open, rather than being solely dedicated to the depiction of ancestral stories.

Ceremony at Dhanaya was painted in 2013, following the death the previous year of Yunupiŋu’s two sisters. Having painted with her siblings every day at the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yunupiŋu felt their loss deeply, with this densely rendered work depicting the time when Yunupiŋu was at Dhanaya for the second of the funeral ceremonies. Painted on stringybark, the work reveals glimpses of yellow ochre emerging from the dense layers of white cross-hatching. In the work, the artist portrays herself and her sisters alongside bush shelters and larrani (bush apple trees), adding the two larrakitj (burial poles) that were painted concurrently with Ceremony at Dhanaya. 

The distinct gestural and repetitive markings, coupled with the emotional intensity of Ceremony at Dhanaya, place Yunupiŋu as a significant trailblazer in contemporary Yolŋu art.

Gloria Strzelecki, Associate Curator of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art