Jessica Lyons

This painting depicts the Wanarn chapter of the Kungkarrangkalpa (Seven Sisters) Tjukurrpa, an important women’s story travelling across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands and wider Western Desert.

Along this section of the songline, the sisters flee eastward across Country while being pursued by Yurla (Wati Nyiru), a powerful ancestral man associated with the constellation Orion. In the Wanarn region the sisters are known as Kungkarrangkalpa, meaning “many sisters”, and the story is carried through significant rock formations, caves, waterholes and ceremonial sites that remain visible in the landscape today.

As the sisters travel through places such as Tjitjipirnitjunku, Kunangurra, Wilurrampal and Kungkarrangkal, Yurla continues chasing them, attempting to trap and capture them. He hides in caves, watches from the hills and uses magic and trickery to pursue the women across the desert. At Kunangurra the sisters shelter in a cave before flying onward to escape him once again.

The Wanarn songline holds deep cultural significance for Ngaanyatjarra families connected to this Country. The story maps both ancestral events and living kinship ties across generations. The rockholes, hills, caves and trees throughout the landscape are understood as evidence of the sisters’ travels and the actions of Yurla during the Tjukurrpa.

Today the story continues to be told through painting, song, dance and travel on Country. Artists paint these places not only as remembered ancestral sites, but as living cultural landscapes connected to family, law and identit