Lena Nyadbi

Lena Nyadbi AO is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from the Warmun Community in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Born around 1935 at Walmanjilukum (Greenvale Station), she grew up on Old Lissadell Station near Kununurra. Her skin name is Nyawurru, and she speaks the Gija language. From a young age, Lena was put to work performing various station duties, including mustering cattle and milking cows.

Lena began painting at the Warmun Art Centre when it opened in August 1998 and has since developed an international reputation for her original and dynamic works. She learned from renowned Warmun artists, particularly Paddy Jaminji, who taught her techniques such as grinding ochre and charcoal and rubbing charcoal into the canvas with her hands.

In 2006, Lena was one of eight Indigenous artists from Australia featured in a project at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, where her work was reproduced on the building's façade. This collaboration continued in 2013 when her painting "Dayiwool Lirlmim" was recreated on a large scale on the museum's rooftop, visible from atop the Eiffel Tower.

Lena paints two principal Dreamings: Jimbirla and Dayiwool Lirlmim. Jimbirla refers to the sharp quartz-like stones used by Gija people to make spear tips, found abundantly in her father's country north of Warmun. Dayiwool Lirlmim represents the scales scraped off the Ngarranggarni (Dreaming) barramundi as she jumped through a range of hills to escape the spinifex nets of women trying to catch her. The gap created by the barramundi's body is now the site of the Argyle Diamond Mine, and the diamonds represent her scales.