page_title: Tjunkiya Napaltjarri
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Tjunkiya Napaltjarri / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Haasts Bluff, west of Alice Springs, Northern Territory
context_page_description: Tjunkiya Napaltjarri was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She is the sister of artist Wintjiya Napaltjarri.
  Tjunkiya's paintings are held in major public art collections, including those of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and the National Gallery of Victoria.
context_section_description: Tjunkiya was born around 1927: the main biographical reference work for the region gives a date of circa 1927; while the Art Gallery of New South Wales suggests circa 1930. The ambiguity around the year of birth is in part because Indigenous Australians operate using a different conception of time, often estimating dates through comparisons with the occurrence of other events.
  'Napaljarri' (in Warlpiri) or 'Napaltjarri' (in Western Desert dialects) is a skin name, one of sixteen used to denote the subsections or subgroups in the kinship system of central Australian Indigenous people. These names define kinship relationships that influence preferred marriage partners and may be associated with particular totems. Although they may be used as terms of address, they are not surnames in the sense used by Europeans. Thus 'Tjunkiya ' is the element of the artist's name that is specifically hers.
  A Pintupi speaker, Tjunkiya was born in the area northwest of Walungurru (known as Kintore, Northern Territory), near the Western Australian border, and west of Alice Springs), after which her family moved to Haasts Bluff. She became second wife to Toba Tjakamarra, father of one of the prominent founders of the Papunya Tula art movement, Turkey Tolson Tjupurrula. At Haasts Bluff she had ten children: these included sons Billy Rowe and Riley Rowe, both of whom painted for Papunya Tula, and daughter Mitjili (born c. 1948), who married Long Tom Tjapanangka and went on to paint at Haasts Bluff. From Haasts Bluff the family moved to Papunya and in 1981 to Kintore.
  Tjunkiya was the sister of artist Wintjiya Napaltjarri, who was also a wife to Toba. Seriously ill in the mid-1990s, Tjunkiya died in 2009.
caption: Haasts Bluff, where Tjunkiya's family first settled after she was born, and where she later painted.
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