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Published by on October 17, 2024

Minyma Tingarri – Angilyiya Tjapiti Mitchell

‘Minyma Tingarri’, is significant tjukurrpa (dreaming) that Angilyiya shares through her artwork. The Tingarri songlines are sacred knowledge held by elders across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands and recognised by different groups across Australia for its explanation of origins in the dream time.

” Here ladies are sitting around, then the men persuade them to go in a direction that is to their advantage. The ladies come by a big lake. This tjukurrpa today, you can understand its location to be between Walu and Jameson”.

This artwork is a rare gem – a collaboration and handing over of knowledge between Angilyiya and her husband. The painting was initiated by Angilyiya’s husband who was a Tingarri man. He became ill and unable to finish the artwork. For a husband to entrust his wife with the continuation of knowledge is recognition of her strength as a teacher and her ability to translate the songlines into the geographical mapping of the land. Angilyiya contributes a womens perspective to the Tingarri tjukurrpa.

Angilyiya continues to be a strong voice in the teaching and sharing of songlines in Papulankutja through her paintings and vision she holds with the other senior ladies in the community.

Categories: Papulankutja Artists

Name: Angilyiya Mitchell

Language: Pitjantjatjara

Community: Papulankutja (Blackstone)

Biography:

Angilyiya was born near to Blackstone Ranges in Emu Country near Kunmarnarra Bore. There is important men's Dreaming in this country which is a traditional law area. She is a strong Law woman with wonderful bush skills, holding a wealth of traditional knowledge and capacity to live on this land. Angilyiya is the senior caretaker for important woman's dreaming places, linked to the Seven Sisters story.

Angilyiya’s father had four wives and her mother was the third. As a result she has a number of siblings and she shares the same father as Anawari Inpiti Mitchell.

She created her first painting in 1994 and has been consistently active as an artist since and has also made limited edition prints. She is energetic and takes an interest in many things and has turned her hand to wood carving to make punu (small wood sculptures) and wira (bowls) and making bush medicines. She sources camel fat from the contractors who manage the feral camel population to use in bush medicine, boiling it up in water.

She is very active in teaching and mentoring in language, culture and heritage. She is frequently called upon by the local Land Management team to come on trips and ‘talk for rockholes’ because of her knowledge of country/sites and ability to teach about ethnobotany and share Tjukurrpa (ancestral creation) stories. She says she is the ‘only one left to teach young people’.

She has also been a keen member of NPY Women’s Council and of Tjanpi Desert Weavers (TDW) making sculptural objects such as baskets and animal figures out of natural fibre, tjanpi (local grasses), raffia and wool.

Angiliyiya has been commissioned to contribute to major projects including creating a grass Toyota that won first prize in the 2005 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art (NATSIA) Awards. It was a collective work created by 18 women from Papulankutja/Blackstone (WA) and was acquired by the Museum and Art Gallery NT as part of their permanent collection. This was the first time a contemporary fibre art piece took the major prize in the history of this prestigious award.

Angilyiya was also a part of the Seven Sisters Songline creating a tjanpi female sculptural figure – one of the Seven Sisters of the Tjukurrpa - for the extraordinary multi-faceted National Museum of Australia (NMA) Songlines exhibition that was on display at the NMA in Canberra from 2017 to 2018. The sculptures can see online as actual objects and have also been digitised as characters in a video. See more here https://songlines.nma.gov.au/tjanpi

© the artist / art centre