Miyarrka Media is an arts collective based in the Yolŋu community of Gapuwiyak in northern Australia. We called ourselves Miyarrka Media because that name collectively represents all the people and lands in the region around Gapuwiyak. We chose that name so that it could include all the clans connected here, not just one family or group.

Our work moves across platforms, borders and cultures. Since we began in 2009, we have taken energy and inspiration from our everyday lives, looking for ways to connect with other people and other places. By bringing our voices together here, we affirm foundational connections to country, to family and feeling. In the process, we also aim to model new forms of creative and collaborative research and scholarship.

Paul Gurrumruwuy, Fiona Yangathu, Jennifer Deger, and David Mackenzie founded the collective, bonded by a shared interest in community-art and curatorial experiments. From the beginning Yolŋu aesthetics and social values have shaped the our projects; over the years we’ve developed a creative practice that allows for new forms of co-philosophy and social analysis.

Kin connections shape our team which often changes from one project to the next. After Yangathu’s death, and Mackenzie’s move to Melbourne, Gurrumruuwuy and Deger continued working together, drawing in a new generation of collaborators including Enid Guruŋulmiwuy, Warren Balpatji, Meredith Balanydjarrk, James Ganambarr, Kayleen Djingadjingawuy, Evan Wyatt, Oliver Lanzenberg, Santiago Carrasquilla and Eugene Lee, Victoria Baskin Coffey and Sebastian J. Lowe (Otis).

We’ve exhibited in the United States, Europe, Australia and Taiwan. We’ve screened our films in Darwin, Moscow, New York, Brisbane, Zagreb, London, Copenhagen, Paris, Cairns, Taipei, Canberra, Warsaw, Melbourne, Sydney, Washington DC and elsewhere.  Our works include the award-winning films Ringtone (2014) and Manapanmirr, in Christmas Spirit (2012), and the exhibitions Christmas Birrimbirr (2011), Gapuwiyak Calling (2014) and Warwuyun (Worry) (2018).

We call our work yuta or new, anthropology. Ours is an anthropology concerned with bringing once separate worlds into relationship. In one way or another each of our projects explores how worlds are variously made, ruptured, and renewed, through digital media and the new networks and aesthetics that they enable.

Miyarrka Media gratefully acknowledges funding support over the years from the Australian Research Council, Arts NT, Screen Territory, UNSW, James Cook University, Aarhus University, and the Ian Potter Foundation.