Nyapanyapa Yunupingu

Nyapanyapa Yunupingu (born c.1945) is an Australian Yolngu painter and printmaker who lives and works in the community at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Yunupingu has created works of art that drastically diverge from the customs of the Yolngu people, making waves within the art world as a result. Due to this departure from tradition within her oeuvre, Yunupingu's work has had varying receptions from within her community and the broader art world.
Biography.
Yunupingu is a Yolngu woman of the Gumatj clan who was born in Arnhem Land in about 1945. She is the daughter of Indigenous artist and cultural leader Munggurrawuy Yunupingu (c.1905–1979), who was involved with the Yirrkala bark petitions.
Widowed, she was a wife of Djapu clan leader Djiriny Mununggurr, who died in 1977. She is the sister of Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Mandawuy Yunupingu, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Barrupu Yunupingu, Dhopiya Yunupingu, and Djakangu Yunupingu (although she has many other siblings).
Will Stubbs, Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre coordinator, said of Yunupingu and her art:
Early life.
Growing up, Yunupingu worked on the mission with her sisters, herding dairy cattle and goats. She learned to paint by watching her father's painting process, although he did not officially pass on Miny'tji designs to her.
Art career.
Yunupingu works through the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre at Yirrkala.
Initial foray into painting.
Yunupingu began painting at The Yirrkala Printspace in 2007, beginning to work daily in the centre's outdoor courtyard. Her presence eventually attracted a group of artists to join her (dubbed the "Courtyard Ladies") which included Barrupu Yunupingu, Gulumbu Yunupingu, Nongirrna Marawili, Mulkun Wirrpanda, and Dhuwarrwarr Marika. Yunupingu's early work dealt with personal stories and experiences, creating narratives that were not inspired by ancestral stories or dreamings but rather by her own life or her family history. Her work met with much success with her breakout painting "Incident at Mutpi 1975", 2008, which featured a depiction of her being mauled by a buffalo. The Mulka Project created a film to go along with the piece and the painting and film won the 2008 Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award.
Mayilimiriw ("meaningless") paintings.
In 2009, after a dream in which the buffalo that had mauled Yunupingu in 1975 appeared to her, she vowed to never again paint a depiction of the traumatic event. She began instead for a period to create paintings that were devoid of figurative images. Rather, they focused on layering coloured cross-hatching, creating an artistic style that centred around the nature of creation in the moment.
White paintings.
Yunupingu's "white paintings" take this concept of mayilimiriw further. Produced from 2009–2010, this series of paintings are solely focused on rhythmic mark-making, excluding colour from the narrative and instead creating works that were uninhibited in their spontaneous nature. Rather than being a premeditated image, Yunupingu's resulting work was fully dependent on the moment, the texture and stroke varying depending on material factors such as the brush and paint she was using.
Figurative paintings.
Whilst most of her work falls under the category of mayilimiriw, Yunupingu has created newer works which do contain figurative references. Specifically, she has included 'Ganyu" ("Stars"), which refer to the story of the seven sisters.
Process.
Yunupingu does not draft or plot her paintings, instead she relies on spontaneity and texture to create her works. Throughout her career as an artist she has transitioned from creating razor-incised carvings of animals and spirits, to linocut prints, to bark paintings, and recently multimedia projections. Within her mayilimiriw paintings, Yunupingu creates a structure to work from by adding in circles, lines, and shapes which she then surrounds with crosshatching, using red, pink, and white earth pigments.
Reception of art.
While Yunupingu's art has received many accolades and has seen success internationally, there is a certain level of puzzlement over her success within her own community. Her paintings diverge from tradition and do not depict the traditional stories and dreamings of her people, nor their Minytji designs, thus they are seen by those within the culture as having "no power" and as something that is communicating purely with the Western art market rather than the Yolngu people. Despite this hesitancy within her own community, Yunupingu is trailblazing a new approach to art within her culture, creating a style and approach that is strictly her own.