Dhalmula #2 Burarrwaŋa
Yathiny
Paper Size: 68.4 x 50.5cm; Image Size: 50.5 x 32.9cm; Paper: Hahnemuhle

ID: 4799-24

As told by the artist:

This is Yathiny is food for miyapunu (turtle). I learn this dhäwu (story) from my family, but this print is done in my own way. Yathiny floats in the moṉuk (salt water). It comes from the songs of my mother’s people the Rirratjiŋu clan. 

The star shapes in this design are the Yathiny, an anenome like colony of single cell organisms known as Porpita porpita which presents as a disc up to 5cm across with fine blue hairlike scillae. This is the food of turtles and a Dhuwa icon. The Rirratjiŋu epic song cycles of the water between Yirrkala and Bremer Island detail the travails of two ancestral Turtle Hunters. The iconography of this tale includes these creatures.

Porpita porpita, or the blue button, is a marine organism consisting of a colony of hydroidsfound in the warmer, tropical and sub-tropical waters of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Arabian Sea. It was first identified by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, under the basionym Medusa porpita.] In addition, it is one of the two genera under the suborder Chondrophora, which is a group of cnidarians that also includes Velella. The chondrophores are similar to the better-known siphonophores, which includes the Portuguese man o’ war, or Physalia physalis. Although it is superficially similar to a jellyfish, each apparent individual is actually a colony of hydrozoan polyps. The taxonomic class, Hydrozoa, falls under the phylum Cnidaria, which includes anemones, corals, and jellyfish, which explains their similar appearances.