A woman of great humility, Nyapanyapa Yunupiŋu rose to become one of Australia’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. Hailing from a powerful Yolŋu family, Nyapanyapa was the daughter of the statesman and artist Mungurruway Yunupiŋu, and the younger sister of artist Gulumbu Yunupiŋu.

Nyapanyapa's work represented a radical shift in Yolŋu art history. In 2008, she began to incorporate biographical elements into her paintings, before abandoning figuration altogether. In 2009, she began referring to her works as mayilimiriw—a Yolŋu word that translates as “meaningless.” This put her practice in stark contrast to previous generations of Yolŋu artists, for whom every mark was intended to invoke the presence of ancestral spirits.

For Maḏayin, at the request of curator Djambawa Marawili, Nyapanyapa returned to the theme of ganyu' (stars) which relate to the Seven Sisters or Pleiades star cluster. According to Nyapanyapa:

Our father Mungurrawuy painted the story of Djulpan. This story is about seven sisters who went out in their canoe called Djulpan. During certain seasons they used to go hunting for food and always come back with different types of food. As you can see they would come back with turtle, fish ,freshwater snakes and also bush foods like yams and berries. They can now be seen in the sky of a night , seven stars that come out together like they are shown on the painting.

The stars come in season when the food and berries come out, the stars w ill travel through the sky during that month until the season is over and they don’t come out until the next season. They are the constellation called Plaiedes and they are being chased by three brothers (Orion). They sail over the Northern horizon and when they get home they light their fires.

– Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre