Yaritji Young

BORN c. 1956

REGION Pukatja

LANGUAGE Pitjantjatjara

Yaritji Young is a Pitjantjatjara woman from Pukatja, a community within the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands and she now lives at Rocket Bore; a homeland north of Amata. Young is a significant Australian Aboriginal artist and senior law women who is committed to fostering law and culture and this forms a core part of her artistic practice. Most of Young’s paintings are drawn from the Tjala (Honey Ant) Dreaming.

Young also works with her sisters; Freda Brady, Maringka Tunkin, Sandra Ken and Tjungkara Ken and, together, they form the Ken Sisters also known as the Ken Family Collaborative, receiving international attention and winning major awards. In this collaborative the sisters paint together, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes consecutively, on a grounded canvas and, together, they focus on familiar and familial subjects that they share as their birthright.

Young’s parents are Mick Wikilyire and Paniny Mick and she was born in the bush, near a creek, at Pukatja. Little is known of her early life but she attended school in Amata and, it was here, that she first learnt to make baskets, her earliest form of textile work.

As an individual Young is a successful artist and, after many group exhibitions, had her first solo exhibition ‘Yaritji Young: Walytjapitiku Laina – Family Lines’, at the Alcaston Gallery in Melbourne, in 2017; this was followed by two more in 2018 and 2019 respectively at the same gallery. Her individual work is also held in many significant collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery.

In 2018 the sisters won the People’s Choice category at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award with their six square metre painting ‘Seven Sisters’ which tells the Tjukarpa story about the constellations of the Pleiades (the sisters) and Orion (a lusty or bad man) and the sisters attempts to run away/protect each other.

‘Seven Sisters’ went on to win the 2016 Wynne Prize.