Marpa - Lucy Yukenbarri Napanangka

Marpa reflects Lucy Yukenbarri Napanangka’s deep cultural knowledge and lived experience as one of the last generation of desert people to move into the mission at Balgo Hills, on the western edge of the Tanami Desert, after living a fully traditional nomadic life and undergoing complete initiation prior to contact with European colonists. As a senior law woman, she held irreplaceable knowledge of ancient places, ceremonies and narratives, which underpin this work.

The painting depicts a central rock hole in the Great Sandy Desert, a vital and life-sustaining place, encircled by sand dunes rich with bush foods, particularly pura, the wild bush tomato. Viewed from an aerial perspective, the composition maps Country as a living system, shaped by ancestral presence and sustained through generations of cultural responsibility.