Makinti Napanangka
          

Makinti was the winner of Australia’s premier Indigenous art prize
at the 25th Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award.

 



Born:                     c.1930 - 2010

 Region:                   Central Desert, NT

 Community:                Kintore 

 Outstation:               Kaakuratinja

 Language:                 Pintupi

 Subsection:               Napanangka 

Makinti Napanangka is one of the leading women artists from the Western Desert working 
with Papunya Tula Artists. 

Makinti Napanangka is a Pintupi speaker who was born sometime around 1930 in the Lake 
MacDonald region. She and her family walked in to Haasts Bluff before the Papunya 
Community was established.

She began painting in the mid 1990s and quickly developed her own distinctive style 
and has been painting regularly with the Papunya Tula Artists cooperative since 1996.

Makinti's work incorporates designs associated with the travels of the Kungka Kutjarra 
(two women). The wandering lines that so often feature in her paintings depict the 
swirling hair string skirts worn by women during ceremonies associated with certain sites. 
While the patterning refers to the skirts, the flowing rhythms of the lines hint at the songs 
and dances of the Pintupi women's ceremonies.