Kelly Napangardi Michaels was born in 1993 in Alice Springs Hospital, the closest hospital to Nyirripi, a remote Aboriginal community, 450 km north west from Alice Springs. She grew up in Nyirripi with her family, attending the local school before furthering her education studies at Yirara College, Alice Springs, a boarding school for indigenous students.
Kelly comes from a longline of well-known Warlukurlangu artists. She began painting with Warlukurlangu Artists Aboriginal Corporation, an Aboriginal owned and governed art centre located in Yuendumu and Nyirripi in 2020. She paints her mother’s and grandmother’s Mina Mina Jukurrpa (Mina Mina Dreaming), stories relating directly to her land, its features and the plants and animals that inhabit it. They have been passed down through the generations for millennia. She uses an unrestricted palette and blends her own patterns with ancestral motifs to depict her traditional Jukurrpa.
When Kelly is not painting, she spends time with her young family, passing on her traditional Jukurrpa stories.
- courtesy of Warlukurlangu Artists of Yuendumu