Malaluba Gumana

From 2006, Gumana started creating larger and more complex work with the encouragement of her art centre. In 2007, her work was shown for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA) at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin. In 2008, her bark and hollow logs sold out at an exhibition with Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, and her dhatam imagery was selected by the Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures for T-shirt and promotional material. By 2009, her larrakitj were part of the Kerry Stokes Larrakitj Collection, which exhibited that year at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, and also won an exhibition place in the 17th Sydney Biennale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2010. In 2013, she won a NATSIAA award in the category for Bark Painting, followed by another win in 2019 of NATSIAA’s Wandjuk Marika Memorial 3D Award for three-dimensional work by an Indigenous artist.

Malaluba Gumana (born 1953) is an Australian Aboriginal artist from northeast Arnhem Land, who has gained prominence through her work in painting and the production of larrakitj, the memorial poles traditionally used by Yolngu people in a mortuary ceremony.

Gumana was born in 1953 and lived in the Gangan homeland of the Blue Mud Bay region in northeast Arnhem Land. She is an artist with Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala, an Indigenous community-controlled art centre of northeast Arnhem Land. Her complex and fluid paintings frequently refer to the story of the all-powerful Rainbow Serpent or wititj (olive python) as it travels through her mother's Gålpu clan lands. She mainly represents the Gålpu clan designs of dhatam (water lily), djari (rainbow), djayku (file snake) and wititj (olive python), applying the technique of marwat (cross-hatching) using a finely controlled hair brush. Intellectual property rights of clan designs are held by the clan, and only people with rights to certain designs are able to use them.