Beau Dick’s Dzunuk’wa Is Here for Your Soul by John Drury

Beau Dick (1994) “Crooked Beak” (foreground). Red Cedar, cedar bark and acrylic paint, 12 x 8 x 34 inches.

By JOHN DRURY May 21, 2024

Here on the East Coast and in New York City, we are about as far as one gets from artist Beau Dick’s beloved home of choice, Alert Bay. He who was Walas Gwa’yam by name - the “big, great whale” - and a Hereditary Chief of his people, even now posthumously, continues to expand his philosophical reach by way inarguable artistic talent and the shared tales of his indigenous people. Beau’s warnings of the inherent and matched evils of colonialism and capitalism come to us from the woods, deep in the ancient and old-growth, wooded forests of the Pacific Northwest and are timeless, as revealed in the reflection today’s ongoing and evil land grabs and rampant greed, fueled of war and division.

Beau Dick (2005) “Wind," Red Cedar, acrylic paint and feathers, 28 x17.5 x 9 inches.

Ours is the rare opportunity then, as Beau Dick (1955-2017) preferred his mask-making efforts danced in ceremony. He also relished his habit of burning large numbers of his works; a believed propulsion of their regenerative powers and a practice of protocol aimed to foster the new, in thus sparked perpetuity. Dick’s, is the long game. Installed in the recently enlarged space that is the Andrew Kreps Gallery, each carved-wood mask is allowed ample room to radiate, in singularity, the power of Dick’s crafted vision. For most, what is exhibited here in metropolis Manhattan, is likely mysterious. They are the creatures of the woodland. And so - this is by default then, a sacred space, and our inquisitive eye is met head on - in bold encounter each entity, in this, his 2^nd New York solo exhibition; following his “Devoured by Consumerism” showing, which was held at White Columns, in 2019. Each is animated – tongues protrude, lips purse; each seems slow and deliberate in confrontation. And as is true to all living creatures of the forest, there seems breath.

Not since Charles Edenshaw had there been a greater native carver from the PNW. Sure, there were his contemporaries and celebrated carvers Dempsey Bob, Robert Davidson and Bill Reid, but Dick worked not wood alone, using what he made of it to protest the corrupt and genocidal tendencies the colonizing entities who looked to abolish his people and their customs. Here was the true reward his effort. On completion a 10-day, 500km trek from Alert Bay in 2013, where Dick lived and worked, to the steps of the BC legislature in Victoria, Dick performed a copper cutting ceremony in shaming protest of the region’s governing body’s abuse of its indigenous peoples and treaties. The action of disapproval, is indeed work. Protest is movement.

Beau Dick (2012) “Otter Woman." Red Cedar, acrylic paint and horsehair, 16 x 15 x 9 inches

Dick’s artwork is inseparable from the traditions, beliefs and creative practices of the fishing village where he was born, Kwakwaka’ Wakw. Here wealth was determined not by what one had, but by how much you could give away – the gifting procedures of Potlatch instrumental to his creations, still practiced with relish. Participating in Documenta 14, in Greece and in Germany (2017), Beau’s many gifts included the introduction of Northwest Coast art to a global audience. Once made illegal by the Indian Act of 1885, Potlatch was then nonetheless practiced by the inhabitants Dick’s village, in secrecy, as allowed by its remoteness. And it was exactly that wooded seclusion of his childhood experience that cemented the practice of the Elbow adze, at the foot of his carving father and grandfather. There is in the Andrew Kreps Gallery, in deliberation our own convention, the painful sense of a history lost - in a colonialist and consumerist plunder believed progress - the ever insatiable, ravenous. Gluttony fails in the end. Stealthy and deliberate is rarely the eaten.

Confucious - “To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace”. WM