Women’s Tingari

Debra has painted a traditional Tingari depicting sacred women’s ceremonial sites created by Tingari ancestors. Tingari men and women travelled over the lands performing rituals and creating and shaping particular sites. Tingari men were followed by Tingari women, and then by young novices. Travels usually involved a number of song cycles. The designs – normally powerful geometric shapes, with abstract markings which were traditionally decorated onto shields. Painted onto the body for ceremonies, and onto the ground as story telling/painting. These stories were passed to the young men and women who went through initiation. This mythology of the Tingari lies at the very heart of the Pintupi people.