Stockroom490 of 549
Click to enlargec.1920 – 2013
- Region
- Western Desert
- Community
- Wirrimanu (Balgo)
- Language group
- Purtitjarra; Mantjilytjarra; Wangkajunga (Wangkatjunga, Wangkajungka); Kukatja
Nakarra Nakarra I – Seven Sisters Dreaming, 2003
original screenprint
$1,200
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- Edition size
- 99
- Printer
- Theo Tremblay assisted by Barak Zelig
- Studio
- Editions NFP, Bungendore NSW
- Paper
- Magnani Pescia 300gsm
- Paper size
- 76 x 56 cm
- Image size
- 70 x 53 cm
- Framed
- No
- AAPN
- EN002
- Production notes
- Acetates created at Warlayirti Artists, Balgo Hills WA, June 2002. Print published Bungendore NSW, June 2003.
- Exhibited
- Yilpinji: Love Art and Ceremony, Australian Museum, Sydney; toured nationally and internationally (Australia, United States and Europe), 2002–2003. Curated by Dr Christine Nicholls; coordinated by Adrian Newstead for the Australian Art Print Network.
- Artwork story
- ‘Nakarra’ is a familiar, abbreviated, or intimate version of the Kukatja kinship term, “Nakamarra”, a female ‘skin’ (kin) name that is often used as a form of address. It is also a children’s form of the skin name Nakamarra. Plurals in the Kukatja language (and in Warlpiri) are sometimes formed by reduplication, ie simply by doubling the singular version of the noun/nominal. Hence ‘Nakarra Nakarra’ implies more than one girl or woman, who all share the skin-name ‘Nakarra’. In this particular instance there are seven girls/women with the same skin-name Nakarra. They are sisters. The Nakarra Nakarra Dreaming or Seven Sisters narrative exists in many forms and permutations throughout Indigenous Australia. At the core of the narrative are the Seven Sisters, Creator Beings who move around country, creating natural phenomena and involving themselves in ceremonial life, including “young men’s business” or initiation ceremonies. A man who has ‘got the hots’ for these gorgeous young women is chasing them across the country, meaning that the girls are endlessly on the run, trying to escape his unwanted amorous advances. This man is in the “wrong skin” relationship to the sisters and therefore is not a suitable marriage partner for them under Kukatja law. In fact such a union would be considered incestuous and therefore very wrong. The man’s pursuit of these nubile young women is permanently “engraved” onto the night sky itself in the form of the cluster of stars known in English as The Seven Sisters. The Seven Sisters (the Nakarra Nakarra) are forever destined to flee this lustful, immoral man, a kind of bogeyman figure who seeks physical gratification for his uncontrolled, transgressive sexual love. While he never catches them and never fulfils his illicit desires by having his way with them, the sisters can never rest.