Pink cake, red eyes, coloured photos: Desire, loss and Aboriginal aesthetics in northern Australia

[Extract] The Yolngu word for colour is miny'tji.1 Miny'tji can also be translated as 'pattern'; it can refer to sacred clan designs, but the meaning encompasses designs and patterns of all sorts. Rather than approaching these as distinct or separate definitions, I want to show how Yolngu see colours and patterns as inextricably connected - a point of no small significance in a cultural context where social relations are given shape and meaning by an intricate pattern of connections created by the journeys and activities of Ancestral beings (see Keen 1994; Morphy 1992).