Kay Finn and Jeannie Minunga

Overview
Jeannie Minunga and Kay Finn are Indigenous Aboriginal artists from Australia and also sisters in law who create collaborative large scale paintings together, currently being exhibited amongst contemporaries at the EXPO Chicago art fair by the Rebecca Hos

Collaborative endeavour has always been a feature of aboriginal art practice, just as it is a feature of aboriginal ceremonial life.

 

Jeannie Minunga and Kay Finn are sisters-in-law, living in far north South Australia, between Umoona, Coober Pedy and Oodnadatta. Minunga is a senior Yankunytjatjara woman, Finn a senior Pitjantjatjara woman. (They were both born in the early 1950s.) They began painting together at the Umoona Senior Women’s Collaborative at Umoona Art Centre in Coober Pedy in 2021, and although they each work independently on occasion, they have become celebrated for their complex large-scale collaborative works.

 

Their painting Nganampa Ngura was shortlisted for the 2022 Wynne Prize. Their paintings depict important cultural sites and creation stories of their respective countries. Minunga’s principal subject is the Wanampi (water snake) Tjukurpa (‘Dreaming’) manifested in the country around Paradise; Finn paints the kapi tjukula (waterholes) around Indulkana. Through their collaborative work they show the interconnection of these lands and stories.