Artiste : Bandarr Wirrpanda (1980)

Titre de l'œuvre : Yiŋapuŋapu

Etched Aluminium

Format : 120 x 50 cm

Provenance et certificat original : centre d'art aborigène de Yirrkala

Référence de la peinture : 1019-21

© Photo & text : Aboriginal signature with the courtesy of the artist, & Buku-Larrngay Mulka.

Explication de l’œuvre :

The designs in this piece are tied to the saltwater estate and ritual focal point at Djarrakpi, the home of Bandarr and his clan.

This beautiful place is located on the Northern entrance of Blue Mud Bay on the Western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. It has its founding origins in the times of the first sunrises by the Guwak (a people, 2 men, a koel cuckoo) and a messenger in the form of ringtail possum called marrŋu. The koel at Djarrakpi made roost atop the Marawili (native cashew tree) and Marrŋu made his mark for the Maŋgalili clan by scratching into its trunk. Behind the massive coastal dunes, there is also a lake of freshwater and at the back of these dunes is said to reside the powerful maternal figure of Nyapaliŋu. She wore a possum furstring girdle crossing her chest; the levy bank of the lake was also of the same masculine and sacred fur, a great long shank.

The Guwak as two ancestral hunters left the shores of Djarrakpi in their canoe, testing themselves against the elements, unfathomable sea creatures, the distant horizon and the destructive wake of a giant turtle which eventually capsized their canoe. The Guwak drowned and with their canoe washed back to the Djarrakpi shore. This epiphany; original deaths of the original Maŋgalili gave birth to the original tradition of mortuary rites that nurtured the deceased, clearing the way for temporary release into the ether before reincarnation.

Above this shore - made sacred with this profound wash up - is the Djarrakpi yiŋapuŋapu ground. The yiŋapuŋapu is a low relief sand sculpture of feminine elliptical shape, and used in the context of mortuary for the Yirritja clans of Maŋgalili, Madarrpa and Dhalwaŋu. This painting includes the yiŋapuŋapu of these three sites. Its primary traditional function is to keep the contamination of death within the confines of the sculpture. Placement of the deceased with in the yiŋapuŋapu on the associated clan land in days before contact had been reserved originally for the creator ancestors. In these areas and by way of permanence for perpetuity, yiŋapuŋapu sites denoted indisputable land ownership.

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