Originally from Central Arnhem Land (Australia's northern coast), Lena Yarinkura lives and works in Gœnœjangga, on the Blyth River, and belongs to the famous Maningrida artistic community, representing the younger generation.

After beginning to express herself by painting on bark, like her husband Bob Burruwal, this artist then had the idea of using eucalyptus fibres to create real sculptures, which considerably renewed the traditional way in which natural fibres had been worked before her. She created the spirit sculptures Mimi and the mermaid sculptures Yawk-Yawk, for which she received numerous prestigious awards in the 1990s, including the Wandjuk Marika Memorial Three Dimensional Award (in 1994 and 1997). Until then, these fibres had been used mainly to make traditional baskets. 

While continuing to draw inspiration from the mythology of her native region, she then had the idea of exploiting the resources of mediums hitherto unknown to Aboriginal artists on the north coast, such as metal. From 2000-2001, she began to imagine aluminium sculptures representing various animals from her region, creatures both familiar (such as dogs or piglets surrounding their mother) and more specific to Australia, such as the bandicoot or the quoll (dasyure in French).