documenta 14 closed its doors in Kassel on 17 September 2017. In memoriam of Beau Dick, Hereditary Chief of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation in British Columbia on Canada's West Coast, we show this mask of his series "Undersea Kingdom".
Beau Dick’s name in the Kwakw’ala language means “big, great whale.”
His carvings often feature Dzunuk’wa, the “wild woman of the woods,” and her counterpart, Bakwas, “wild man of the woods.” These supernatural figures loom large in Kwakwaka’wakw cosmology and also in Dick’s practice.
To find out more about Beau Dick and the remarkable documenta 14, illustrating the planetary scope of contemporary art through the huge span of works presented in Athens and Kassel, click here.
For Beau Dick's role in the International Roundtable we organised in 2014 in Vancouver on the unceeded First Nation's territory, click here.