Yalti Napangati (born around 1970) is an Australian
Aboriginal art
Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carving ...
ist. She is a painter of the
Western Desert style of art, and paints for the
Papunya Tula
Papunya Tula, registered as Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is an artist cooperative formed in 1972 in Papunya, Northern Territory, owned and operated by Aboriginal people from the Western Desert of Australia. The group is known for its innovative ...
school.
Her husband,
Warlimpirrnga, is also a well-known artist. They were both members of the famous
Pintupi Nine
The Pintupi are an Australian Aboriginal group who are part of the Western Desert cultural bloc, Western Desert cultural group and whose traditional owner, traditional land is in the area west of Lake Macdonald and Lake Mackay in Western Austral ...
, the last group of Aborigines living a traditional way of life in Australia.
Yalti was born in the
Great Sandy Desert
The Great Sandy Desert is an interim Australian bioregion,[IBRA Version 6.1](_blank)
data , sometime around 1970. She and her family lived as
nomad
A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...
s in the desert, travelling along the western side of
Lake Mackay
Lake Mackay, known as Wilkinkarra to the Indigenous Pintupi people, is the largest of hundreds of ephemeral salt lakes scattered throughout the Pilbara and northern parts of the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia and the Norther ...
.
Most other Pintupi families had moved into
settlements during the 1950s, but Yalti's father kept the family away from these. Her parents were Lanti (or "Joshua") and Nanu.
She has an older brother,
Tamayinya, and a younger sister,
Yukultji. She married Warlimpirrnga sometime during the early 1980s, possibly when she was as young as 12.
She and her family came out of the desert in 1984. She now lives at
Kiwirrkurra
Kiwirrkurra, gazetted as Kiwirrkurra Community, is a small community in Western Australia in the Gibson Desert, east of Port Hedland, Western Australia, Port Hedland and west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Alice Springs. It had a popul ...
, and has two sons and two daughters.
Yalti finished her first paintings for Papunya Tula in June 1996. She makes
acrylic paintings of landscapes associated with Pintupi
dreaming stories. Her paintings are of important places in her country, around Marruwa, Laurryi, Wirrulnga and Patjarr.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Napangati, Yalti
Indigenous Australian artists
Living people
Australian painters
1970s births
Pintupi
Australian women painters
21st-century Australian women artists
21st-century Australian artists