Sandhills at Mina Mina, 1999 by Dorothy Napangardi 41x129cm Cat 4019DN

In this unusual and striking artwork, the artists has reinterpreted the sandhills at Mina Mina. This abstract piece with its geometric style gives this painting an almost 3D effect.

Painted in 1999, during a period of great experimental artworks, returning to her studio in Alice Springs after a life changing journey back to her traditional homelands, where Napangardi was instructed in her womanhood learning.

Prior to this time, Napangardi had painted her early depictions of country - either Bush Plum or Bush Banana Dreaming - those 'dreamings' belonging to Napangardi kinship but not site specific to Mina MIna, her ancestral country that she had left prior to initiation as she had been too young in the early 1960's when people left their homelands for Papunya or Yuendumu.

Mina Mina is a major women’s ceremonial site, being the artist’s custodial country located near Lake Mackay in the Tanami Desert, north of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. During the Jukurrpa Ancestral women of the Napangardi and Napanangka sub-section groups (aunt / niece relationship, in which knowledge is passed from one to the other) gathered to collect ceremonial digging sticks ( Karlangu ) that had emerged from the ground. They then proceeded east, performing rituals of song and dance, to the place known as Jankinyi. A large stand of Desert Oaks ( Allocasuarina decaisneana ) now grow where these digging sticks emerged from the ground.