Women's Ceremony and Body Paint in Aboriginal Art
Women's ceremony and body paint designs are among the most important subjects in Aboriginal women's painting, particularly across the Central and Western Deserts.
The Tradition
In women's ceremonies, women paint designs onto each other's upper bodies with ochre. The designs relate to particular Dreamings, Country and women's law, and are painted for ceremonies that include song and dance. Among Anmatyerre women of Utopia, women's ceremony is known as awelye, and the body paint designs are often called by the same name.
Much of women's ceremony is restricted knowledge, held by senior women and not shared with men or outsiders. Paintings made for the public show only what can be shared, and the full meaning of a design is not always explained.
The Paintings
When artists paint women's ceremony or body paint on canvas, they are translating designs from skin to a new surface. Bands of parallel lines and curving arcs echo the marks painted across the upper body, and are often combined with elements of Country, bush foods and bush medicine.
Debra Nangala McDonald
Debra Nangala McDonald is a Pintupi artist from Papunya and the granddaughter of Shorty Lungkata Tjungurrayi, one of the early Papunya painters. Alongside the stories she has inherited, she paints her own Women's Body Paint and Women's Dreaming story, a ceremonial story connected to bush medicine that she has developed since moving to Adelaide. She often weaves in the mulga trees she paints with permission from her late mother-in-law, Mitjili Napurrula. Read more in our interview with Debra.
Utopia: Karen Bird Ngale and Janet Golder Kngwarreye
Anmatyerre artist Karen Bird Ngale, from the Utopia Homelands, paints Awelye, drawing on women's ceremonial stories and bush foods. Janet Golder Kngwarreye, also Anmatyerre from Utopia, brings women's ceremony into her My Country paintings.
To learn more, read our guide to the Dreaming or explore our artist interviews.
Browse works by Debra Nangala McDonald, Karen Bird Ngale and Janet Golder Kngwarreye.
Art by Farquhar is a member of the Aboriginal Art Association of Australia.