Frieze Abu Dhabi

The works on view span the artist’s entire career, from her early batik textiles and paintings through to her later colorist canvases and abstractions inspired by the anwerlarr yam.

Kngwarray drew much of her creativity from The Dreaming—a cultural worldview and comprehensive framework that structures and narrates relationships among individuals, families, ancestral history, future descendants, and the land and spirits. Her artistic journey was shaped by her role in ceremonial traditions, expressed through dance, chant, and the painting of bodies with natural materials such as ground ochre, charcoal, and ash. As an Elder of the Anmatyerr people and a custodian of sacred land, she developed a complex and potent visual language, which translated across her vibrant batiks and later paintings on canvas that brought her international acclaim.

Kngwarray first worked in batik, an Indonesian textile dyeing technique introduced to a group of Alyawarr and Anmatyerr women from the Utopia region in the Northern Territory in 1977. Kngwarray was an original member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group, and she made unique experimentations and developed her own personal style in works such as the untitled batik on silk from 1981 on view in Pace’s presentation. By the late 1980s, when she was in her 70s, she transitioned to painting on canvases.

“I did batik at first, and then after doing that I learned more and more and then I changed over to painting for good,” Kngwarray said. “I didn’t want to continue with the hard work batik required—boiling the fabric over and over, lighting fires, and using up all the soap powder over and over. That’s why I gave up batik and changed over to canvas—it was easier. My eyesight deteriorated as I got older, and that’s another reason I gave up batik on silk. It was better for me to just paint.”