The Turning Season

Emily Kam Kngwarray's abstract paintings and textiles map the ancestral lands, seasonal cycles, and ecological relationships of her Anmatyerr Country through layered dots, yam-tracking lines, and shif

Why go

Pace's first New York exhibition of this celebrated Australian artist follows her landmark 2025 Tate Modern retrospective, presenting works spanning 1981–1995 that embody the Dreaming—a lived worldview where ancestral creation stories animate the land and its people.

What to expect

Paintings and textiles across two gallery spaces, including large-scale canvases from the 1990s with dense overlaid dots and sinuous linear forms, batik works from the 1970s–80s, and collaborative textile pieces by Kngwarray's peers from the Utopia community.

Things to know

• Kngwarray (ca. 1914–1996) was an Elder of the Anmatyerr people and custodian of Alhalker in Australia's Northern Territory.
• She produced approximately 3,000 paintings on canvas between the late 1980s and her death in 1996, working prolifically until her final week
• Her work draws from the anwerlarr (pencil yam)—its underground root systems and seedpods (kam, her middle name) appear as recurring motifs.
• Colors in her paintings reflect the seasons: subdued tones during dry periods, bright vivid hues after rain.
• The exhibition includes works from the Tate Modern retrospective, such as Body Markings (Sorry Cuts) (1994), a work on paper.
• Her paintings are held in major collections including MoMA, the National Gallery of Australia, Tate, and the Sehwa Museum of Art in Seoul.