Linda Walker Napurrurla

Linda Walker is an Aboriginal artist who lives near Alice Springs, in the central Australian desert. It illustrates with this Pontillist-style canvas the legend of the ancestor of Yarla, the edible wild potato. If the theme she celebrates may seem strange to a Westerner, it is necessary to take into account the fact that in an arid environment the plants allowing survival are sacred. This is why the Aborigines classify them in the pantheon of their great ancestors who in the Dreamtime shaped the landscape and bequeathed songs, dances and laws to the first inhabitants of Australia.

According to this legend, Ancestor Yarla and Ancestor Wapirti (bush carrot) clashed near Ngarparapunyu, a sacred swamp. We do not know more about this story known only to initiates but we can recognize in this canvas several elements of the traditional iconography of Warlpiri, the artist's people. Indeed, the curved lines symbolize the stems of the yarla from which the flowers bloom. The concentric circles represent the swamp as well as the campfires around which participants in religious ceremonies gather.