AustLit

'Anmatyerre elder and artist Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910–1996) of the Utopia community, Northern Territory, Australia, featured the growth patterns of the pencil yam (Vigna lanceolata) prominently in works such as Untitled (Yam) (1981), Anooralya – Wild Yam (1989) and Yam Dreaming (1996) as well as a number of black-and-white renderings. Through the yam-art of Kngwarreye, this article considers human-vegetal entanglements in Aboriginal Australian societies. Integral to appreciating Kngwarreye’s paintings, the plant-poiesis-people conjunction calls prominence to ancestral—or Dreaming—knowledge of yams not only as providores of material sustenance but also as agential beings-in-themselves who culture humankind across space and time.' (Introduction)