Lena Nyadbi (born 1936, near Warnmarnjulugun lagoon, Western Australia) is a contemporary Indigenous Australian artist from the Warmun Community in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Her works include Dayiwul Lirlmim, details of which were painted on the roof of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. The resulting installation can only be seen from the air, including the Eiffel Tower and Google Earth.
Early life
Lena Nyadbi, of the Gija people, by her own estimate, was born circa 1936 at Warnmarnjulugun lagoon near Greenvale Station in the East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Her father and mother died whilst she was at a young age, and she was raised by her older sister, Goody Barrett, on Lissadell Station.
From a young age, Nyadbi served as an indentured labourer on cattle stations in the region. She learned milking of cows, cattle mustering and how to ride horses which were not broken. Nyadbi recalls the station mistress would drag her to the kitchens and would teach her by force to carry cups of tea without spilling any. In 1968 when the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission ruled that indigenous cattle station workers would be paid the same as their non-indigenous counterparts, Nyadbi along with many Gija people were forced to relocate to the Warmun Community. In the 1970s the Warmun Art Movement was formed, and it during this time that Nyadbi lived amongst artists such as Hector Jandany, Queenie McKenzie, Rover Thomas, Jack Britten, Paddy Jaminji and George Mung Mung.
Artistic career
In 1998, the same year the Warmun Art Centre opened its doors, Nyadbi began painting full-time. Nyadbi had spent many years watching and learning from the other artists in Warmun, and her mentor, Paddy Jaminji, taught her the time-honoured techniques of grinding ochre and charcoal, and using her hands to place the charcoal onto a canvas. Nyadbi isn't the only artist that utilizes ochre as it's been a fundamental material of aboriginal Australian art for thousands of years to paint dreamtime stories. Due to ochres naturally limited colour profile, you'll observe similar colour schemes throughout her artwork; historically, this allowed aboriginal artists to focus on colour relationship and the manner in which they affect one another. Nyadbi creates her own paint and her style is known for its "rich, spare aesthetic", as well as her "preference for strongly contrasting colours" and "repeated 'stanzas' of symbols" that pair with her ancestral narratives.
Nyadbi typically paints two dreaming stories (ngarranggarni in the Gija language); the Jimbirlam Ngarranggarni (Spearhead Dreaming) and Dayiwul Lirlmim Ngarranggarni (Barramundi Scales Dreaming). Her Jimbirlam Ngarranggarni pieces tell the story of the country of her father to the north and east of the Warmun Community on the Doon Doon side of the Great Northern Highway, whilst her Dayiwul Lirlmim Ngarranggarni works tell the story of the land of her mother, the Dayiwul Country which is the location of the Argyle Diamond Mine. Respectfully, the "vertical strokes" in Nyadbi's paintings illustrate Spearhead Dreaming, while the "semi-circular shapes" illustrate Barramundi Dreaming.
In 2002, director of the Musée du quai Branly, Stéphane Martin, and the museums architect Jean Nouvel, enlisted the help of then-French President Jacques Chirac to have the Australian government and the Australia Council for the Arts find indigenous Australian artists for a project, which would see their art being displayed on the then-unopened museum in ways reminiscent of their traditional wayson walls, windows and ceilings. A total of eight Aboriginal artists were chosen to have their works displayed for the project; amongst them was Nyadbi.
The piece Jimbirlam and Kumerra, also referred to as Jimbirla and Gemerre, meaning Spearheads and Scarifications, was originally a black-and-white piece, but it was decided by the museum to convert it to a grey-on-grey piece, so that it would fit in with the aesthetics of the Haussmannian buildings across from the museum. Early experiments for the templates which would eventually be placed on the museum exterior wall were rejected by Nyadbi because they lacked contrast and she believed it made her artwork look like sausages. Her initial reluctance to approve the template designs almost led to her being ejected from the project. The resultant rendering of the piece is now found on an exterior wall of the museum and is visible from rue de l'Université.