Tjunkiya Napaltjarri - Artist Info

About Tjunkiya Napaltjarri

Name variants

Kamay, Tjunkiya Kamayi, Tunkali Napaltari, Tjungkiya
  • Biography

    Tjunkiya Napaltjarri was born around 1927 northwest of Kintore, in the Northern Territory near the Western Australian border. A Pintupi woman, she was the sister of Wintjiya Napaltjarri, another Papunya Tula artist. She came in from the bush with her extended family in 1956, settling in Haasts Bluff.

    She attended the 1994 Haasts Bluff/Kintore Women's Painting Camp held beside Walungurru (Kintore), a women's site, at which Pintupi women began to paint for the first time. Rather than dotting acrylic paint like other Aboriginal artists, Tjunkiya's unique style results from pushing and dragging paint across the canvas, yielding jagged, energetic surfaces.

    "'When I paint,' Napaltjarri says, ...

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