91cm x 62cm

Artist: Nanyuma Napangati
Acrylic on Linen
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About the Painting - My Country

Marrapinti is a place of cultural significance for the Aboriginal people. Dreamtime stories tell that female ancestors stopped at this site to collect desert raisins, a vital bush food, which would grow after the rains and fruit for a couple of months each year.

Indigenous Australians believe that the nose bone ancestor lives in the ground at this site and while camped at Marrapinti the women would fashion nose bones jewellery. These nose bones are known as Marrapinti after the location, and they are a part of one of the most important Aboriginal ceremonial rites.

The 'nose bone ceremony' marks a boys transition to manhood. The ritual begins with the painting of sacred symbols on the body, followed by piercing the septum. The nose is pierced with the bone of an animal or bird associated with a tribe's Dreaming and the ancestral creator of the sacred site. These nose bones were originally used by both men and woman, today they are usually only worn by the older generation on ceremonial occasions.

About the Artist - Nanyuma Napangati

 She was born around 1940 and lived a traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle until her mid-twenties. Welfare patrols brought her and her family to Papunya in 1964 where they settled. Nanyuma began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in 1996 and three years later she was involved in the Kiwirrkurra Women's Painting project, which created work to be auctioned to raise money for the Renal Unit at Kintore.

Nanyuma is a Pintupi senior law woman and depicts designs associated with women's Ceremony at Marrapinti. Nanyuma is the sister to Charlie Tjapangati, Kanya Tjapangati and Bambutu Napangatii, all recognised artists. She is also mother in-law to George "Hairbrush" Tjungurrayi.

Nanyuma was one of a dozen women from Kiwirrkurra who travelled to Sydney in 2000 to dance in the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.