Wayipi Story - Uni Nampijinpa Martin
Wayipi Story - Uni Nampijinpa Martin
Etching. Sugar lift painting & aquatint with a la poupee inking on two plates.
Edition size 99
Collaborator/Printmaker Basil Hall
Printer Natasha Hall
Studio Basil Hall Editions, Darwin NT
Plate created by Warlukurlangu Artists, Yuendumu, May 2002
Paper Hannemunule Cream
Paper size 760 x 560 mm
Image size 490 x 325 mm
AAPN ID # UM001
Wayipi is a plant creeper that grows along the ground, like a bush yam. Nampijinpa and Nangala women are shown as U shapes looking around for the Wayipi. They have with them parraja (wooden food carrying dishes) and karlangu (digging sticks).
The Jukurrpa (Dreaming) story for this print is about Jungarrayi, a Japangardi man, who travelled around Wanapiyi, a big hill just south west of Yumendumu. In this area he chased a number of Nangala and Nampijinpa women who were digging for Wayipi (bush carrot). The Japangardi man followed those women and tried to reach them in a cave where they were hiding. He managed to grab one of the women for his wife.
Japangardi is shown in the painting, also as a U shape, he has his Karli (rounded boomerangs) and kurlarda (spear).
‘Love Magic’ does exist in traditionally oriented Indigenous Australian communities in a variety of different ways, including visual art, ceremony, lengthy narratives, song and dance, it’s purpose seems to be widely misconstrued. Given that it is an umbrella translation for terminology from many different Indigenous Australian languages.
This artwork is part of a series using the Warlpiri and Kukatja word, Yilpinji, untranslated, rather than the misleading English hocus locus ‘love magic’. Why do indigenous societies practise Yilpinji. In traditional Australian life, there was a rigid system of arranged or ‘promised’ marriages, which to some extent continues to this day. Essentially marriage was an arrangement transacted between families, normally excluding what we now understand as ‘romance’.
’Yilpingi’ or socially authorised adulterous liaisons, which occur within a strict framework of rules, gives scope for the expression of romantic feelings and sexual love, without threatening the marriage system.
However it is quite clear that there is an inherent danger in Yilpinji-mediated relationships. Such unions could easily lurch out of control and therefore threaten normative marriage practises and rules. Hence the Yilpinji Dreaming narratives about illicit, transgressive love affairs, which as warnings and cautionary tales.
