Biography

Makinti Napanangka was born in 1930 in the Lake MacDonald region of Central Australia. She moved to Haasts Bluff with her husband, where she lived until Papunya was established in 1960. Makinti began painting in 1995, when she participated in the Kintore/Haasts Bluff collaborative canvas project, ‘Minyma Tjukurrpa’. The interest in Pintupi women’s art arose in the mid-1990s, quite late in the history of the contemporary Aboriginal art movement. It was in 1996 that Makinti Napanangka, along with her cousin and painting companion, Tatali Nangala, began painting for Papunya Tula Artists.
Makinti’s paintings depict designs associated with the travels of the Kungka Kutjarra (Two Ancestral Women). The lines entering the upper section of Untitled, 2000, represent the handspun, hair-string skirts worn by women during ceremonies. The celebratory nature of these performances is expressed in the hedonistic play of colour and form across the painting’s surface. Napanangka’s art personifies the ongoing presence of Pintupi cultural traditions in the contemporary painting movement.”





AGNSW Hetti Perkins in ‘Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2014



Sadly in Makinti Napananka passed away in 2011.