Manini Gumana lives at her homeland, Gängan, and is a member of Buku-Larrngay Mulka Art Centre at Yirrkala, Arnhem Land. Her father was a highly regarded leader. She is the wife of Garwan Wanambi, an established artist at Yirrkala. Gumana
developed a unique approach to bark painting that epitomises the innovative approach to art among the younger generation of her fellow Yirrkala’s artists.
She began to innovate from 2012 onwards, being the first artist to apply the template or skeleton of the composition using just a marwat (a brush made from human hair attached to a short twig). Normally this was done with an ordinary brush and then marwat used to fill in a cross hatched design. She was also the first artist to use no earth pigments in the ground of the painting and she initiated the practice of applying the paint of the design to bare bark or wood.