Indigenous Aboriginal Artists from Central Australia
Barbara Mbitjana

Artist Profile
Australian Aboriginal Artist Barbara Mbitjana
is from Wilora in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Dob: 1/1/1950
Region: Utopia, Central Desert NT
Community: Wilora, Stirling Station
Outstation: Woola Downs
Language: Anmatyerre or Kaytetye
Affiliation: Ampetyane subsection
Barbara first began painting the Women’s bush tucker dreamings, her dreaming is the bush plum. Aboriginal women have their own ceremonies in which a series of song and dance cycles tell of the Ancestral Beings who walked the earth teaching women’s law and ceremony to isolated groups living throughout the desert. Each tribe has its own set of women ancestors with different stories, designs and dances, but most of the ceremonies have one theme common to all groups – that of food gathering as the most important part of women’s lives.