Kathryn Queama

2019, acrylic on linen
90 x 90 cm
Cat No X1879-19

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Punu – Living Wood
Maruku Arts

Kathryn Queama is minyma Anangu, a Pitjantjatjara woman from the Central Desert area of Australia. As well as working in the Docker River Store and for regional organisation, Nyangatjatjara Aboriginal Corporation, she has been learning carving from her u Kulitja. Her traditional skills have been passed on through the Tjukurpa, the Law and way of life governing their country.

Kungkarangkalpa is the Tjukurpa of the Seven Sisters, concerning a group of women being pursued by a cunning man called Nyiru who attempts to lure them into marriage with him. He disguises himself in countless ways to trick the sisters, and is sometimes also invisible in paintings. In their escape the sisters travelled through a vast amount of Australia. They stopped to camp, build shelters and hunt for food, thus forming many features of the landscape and embedding the knowledge of survival in it. Eventually they fled into the sky where they became the constellation known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Nyiru still follows them ceaselessly across the night sky as one of the bright stars in the constellation of Orion.

– MARUKU ARTS