Born in 1910, Emily Kam Kngwarray spent her childhood in Utopia, a section of the Australian desert located 230 kilometers from Alice Springs. As an elder of the Anmatyerre people, an Indigenous community, Kngwarray painted women’s sacred sites and worked in batik. But when introduced to acrylics in 1988, she became a working artist, immediately prolific, making over 3,000 paintings in the last eight years of her life (she died in 1996). Although Kngwarray rarely left Utopia, her textiles, works on paper, and paintings received national and international attention. She accepted an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship from Paul Keating in 1992, becoming the first Indigenous artist to win the award. This comprehensive survey celebrates the unconsciously radical art of Emily Kam Kngwarray. —Jeanne Malle

This exhibition will travel to the Tate Modern, in London, in 2025.