Biography

(1964 – Present) Muna Kulyuru is a Pitjantjatjara artist, teacher and community leader from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of north-west South Australia. She was born at Tjiwuru, near Ernabella, and attended school at Ernabella before beginning her practice at Tjurma Homelands Art and Craft Centre. She later joined Minymaku Arts, now Tjala Arts, and today paints at the Art Centre in Amata alongside her sister, Janie Kulyuru. Muna has also served in leadership roles at Tjala Arts, contributing to the cultural and organisational life of the Art Centre and her community. Dreaming & Country: Minyma Tjuta Tjukurpa Muna’s paintings frequently relate to Minyma Tjuta Tjukurpa—the story of many women—and her mother’s Country around Watarru in the south-western APY Lands. The Tjukurpa follows the ancestral women and fire as they travel across the land, singing, dancing and creating Country. Rather than presenting this journey literally, Muna describes it through interconnected fields of colour, line and repeated marks. Her paintings are grounded in the relationship between women, ceremony, Country and the transmission of cultural knowledge. Style and Technique Working in acrylic on linen or canvas, Muna constructs her paintings through layered lines, loose geometric forms and clusters of rhythmic marks. These elements often gather into a patchwork-like structure, with passages moving across and into one another rather than following a single fixed pattern. Some compositions are dense and energetic, while others allow areas of open colour to interrupt the surface. Her approach balances repetition with variation, giving each painting an individual rhythm while maintaining its connection to the underlying Tjukurpa. Muna’s Palette Colour is central to Muna’s practice. She works across a broad palette that can include deep reds, pinks, oranges, yellows, purples, blues and greens, often set against areas of black, white or muted earth colour. Contrasting tones help define the separate passages within a composition, while repeated colours connect them across the canvas. The resulting surfaces can be vivid and complex without obscuring the structure of her mark-making. For the Collector Muna has developed her practice over several decades while maintaining an active role as a teacher and leader in Amata. She was selected as a finalist in both the Wynne Prize and the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2024. These selections brought wider recognition to a practice already firmly established within Tjala Arts and the cultural life of the APY Lands.