Wukun Wanambi


Wukun Wanambi was an Australian Yolngu painter, filmmaker, and curator of the Marrakulu clan of northeastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

Early life

Wukuṉ Waṉambi was born on 18 May 1962 Gurka'wuy, Arnhem Land, the eldest son in his family. His father, Mithili Wanambi, was an esteemed clan leader and renowned painter. Although he was born to a family of artists, he wished to be a politician growing up.
When Mithili died in 1981, sacred clan designs could no longer be painted because no one had the authority to paint them any more. It was not until 1997 that Djunggayi taught Wanambi the designs.

Career

From 1997, Wanambi began painting, re-introducing motifs that had not been painted since his father's death. He created works for the Saltwater Country exhibition. While Wanambi was an artist who used many different media, he is best known as a painter and sculptor who worked with natural pigments on bark and traditional memorial poles, or larrakitj.
He also made prints at the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala. He served as the cultural director of The Mulka Project, the media centre in Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka, from its establishment in 2007 until his death. Through this position, he advised individuals on what they have the clan authority to depict in film. However, he was also a video artist himself, working to bridge generations by creating archival art that reconstructed ceremonial documentary archives. Rather than solidifying binaries of past and present, traditional and modern, Wanambi aimed to show the interconnectedness of time as well as the global network through the recording of ceremonial practices. Using both his artwork and his involvement with The Mulka Project, Wanambi advocated for the agency and involvement of Aboriginal peoples to cultivate a true understanding of Aboriginal cultures.
In 2014, he created his first multimedia artwork, Nhina, Nhäma Ga Ŋäma, inspired by the cultural footage archive he was looking after. In 2019, he exhibited an expanded interactive version at Tarnanthi at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. In 2020, he collaborated with the Mulka Team on Watami Manikay, now displayed at the AGNSW.
In 2017, Wanambi travelled to the United States to join the curatorial team for the exhibition Madayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Art from Yirrkala at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection at the University of Virginia. This was Wanambi's first time working as a curator. In 2018 he served as curatorial consultant on the exhibition MIwatj at the La Trobe Art Institute.

Awards

Death and legacy

Wanambi died in Darwin on 1 May 2022.
Two daughters, Dhukumul and Gaypalani Wanambi, are artists at the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala, with Dhukumul serving as a cultural director of The Mulka Project there. They were both taught to paint by their father.

Collections

Significant exhibitions