Water (Ngapa) - Abie Tjangala Jumbyinmba

Water (Ngapa) depicts the vital water sites that sustain life across the artist’s Country in the Central Desert. In Warlpiri culture, ngapa refers not only to physical waterholes, soakages and creeks, but also to the ancestral forces that created and continue to animate these places through Jukurrpa (Dreaming).

The painting maps these sacred sites from an aerial perspective, using concentric forms and rhythmic patterning to describe permanent and ephemeral water sources connected by ancestral journeys. These waters are places of ceremony, knowledge and survival, replenished through seasonal rains and maintained through cultural responsibility.

Through layered mark-making and a restrained, deliberate palette, Jumbyinmba conveys both the abundance and fragility of water in the desert environment. The work is not a literal map but a cultural one, holding stories passed down through generations and asserting the ongoing custodianship of Country.