Fire Country Dreaming

Nathania Nangala Granites was born in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community located 290 km north-west of Alice Springs in the NT of Australia. She was born into a family of artists. Her mother is Valda Napangardi Granites and her grandmother is Alma Nungarrayi Granites (Dec), an established artist who has exhibited in Australia and overseas. Nathania grew up listening to her mother’s and her father’s Jukurrpa stories and watching her family paint. She went to the local school in Yuendumu. When she finished school, she assisted Yasmin Napurrular Musharbash, taking photos for Yasmin’s study of everyday life in an Aboriginal camp. Nathania is married and has a little boy born in 2011.

Nathania has been painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu, since 2011. She paints her father’s Jukurrpa, particularly Ngapa Jukurrpa (Water Dreaming) and Warlukurlangu Jukurrpa (Fire Country Dreaming). She also paints her grandmother’s Yanjirlpirri or Napaljarri-Warnu Jukurrpa (Star or Seven Sisters Dreaming). These stories have been passed down over the generations for millennia and relate directly to the land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. Nathania uses an unrestricted palette to depict a modern interpretation of her traditional culture.

When Nathania is not working, she is taking care of her baby son, or helping out at the Art Centre assisting in the preparation of art canvasses.

She is also Nampijinpa. She has got two skin-names.