Two cultures united in art

OUR LADY of the Sacred Heart church in Alice Springs is built on the site of an Arrernte women’s dancing ground. Now eastern Arrernte artist Kathleen Kemarre Wallace has celebrated that connection, creating a stained glass window for the church. Kathleen spent time as a teenager at the

Santa Teresa Mission, where she found the nuns’ teachings had much in common with her ancestors’ religion. “I thought about [Mary] like Mother Earth or Mother Land,” she says. “I decided to paint her as an Aboriginal mother.”