Selina Numina Kamprina / Country (SN170)

Selina Numina was born in 1978 and is the daughter of Barbara Price Mbtitjana who is an elder painter and cultural elder from Stirling Station. Selina has five sisters, Jacinta, Lanita, Louise, Caroline and Sharon Numina, who are also well respected artists from Utopia. Selina, along with her sisters and brothers were sent to boarding school in Darwin as no secondary schooling was available in Tennant Creek, 500kms north of Alice Springs. The family now live in Darwin and often travel back to Ti Tree and Stirling Station in the north Utopia region near Tennant Creek.

Selina’s family come from a long line of desert artists of the contemporary Aboriginal art including world renowned aunties, the late Gloria and Kathleen Petyerre. Many women from the Petyerre, Mbtitjana and Numina family name hold custody and are knowledge keepers of stories such as Bush Medicine Leaves, Bush Tucker, Seeds, Soakages and Women’s Ceremony, in common with other skin groups across the vast arid landscape and desert areas of central Australia.

Subjects of importance in the theme-series paintings are various bush tucker stories. Plant foods include wild berries, plums, onion, yam, seeds etc. Many animals can be depicted as food source or as totems such as Thorny Devil Lizard and Dingo Tracks. Womens’ Ceremony, Awelye Body Art Ceremony are mostly painted by senior ladies but younger women need to know it from a young age. Some themes such as Bush Tucker can be open and universal others can be secret and passed down through cultural ceremonies.

Knowing, carrying and reinforcing these stories gives respect for Country and ancestors and shows responsibility and care of holding such stories to keep the stories and traditional practices alive. The knowledge must be retold repeatedly and handed on. The Numina Sisters have all been taught to paint by their earlier elder painter grandmothers, mother-aunties, and cousin-sisters connected across the Central Desert region. Their mother’s and grandmother’s Country is in the bush and remote Stirling Station. Their father is from Utopia community side.

In this painting Selina has depicted her country where they collect the bush medicine leaves and various plants with seeds or plums. Also shown are travel paths passing through the stony country as well as the desert areas including hills and dried up salt lake areas.

Women’s paintings often depict a topographical view of their country with stories related to women’s business, or initiation ceremony for women. The women may be past initiates, or young women awaiting instruction from older women. Initiates are taught their roles as nurturers of the land and keepers of the law by which life’s rules and regulations are set.

Other stories involve bush medicine, seed dreaming and fire dreaming. Ceremonies always involve song, dance and body decoration. The ownership, management and performance are dependent upon knowledge and status. Body-painting carries deep spiritual significance for the Aboriginal people.