DY Begay’s retrospective show at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC opened in September. She has been working on the show for years or perhaps we should say an entire lifetime. I haven’t seen it yet, but the catalog that accompanies it is wonderful. Calling it a catalog is a little misleading. It is a celebration of a weaver’s life, the places she comes from, and the experiences she has had that have shaped her work.
Sublime Light cover
DY Begay is from Tsélání, Arizona. This is a place out in the broad sweep of land west of Chinle, full of mesas and sunsets and sagebrush. There are churro sheep and traditional ways are still followed around some of the hogans on the Navajo reservation. These are my observations from growing up nearby in Gallup, NM and having visited Tsélání myself. Perhaps it is impossible to understand the place until you’ve lived a life there, but Sublime Light (the book) gives you a deep look at what this place is like and the environments the artwork DY makes is grounded in.
“My weavings have become an intimate response to the topography of my origin.... My ultimate goal is to capture and apply the natural beauty of Mother Earth by illustrating her vision into the warp and weft of my art.”
What I feel from this book and from my talks with DY herself is that she is deeply rooted in place. Her show catalog reflects this very well. It is full of images from the southwestern USA, most particularly the Navajo reservation where DY grew up and lives today.
Example landscape page from Sublime Light
Sublime Light is a beautifully produced book. It is hardcover with a dust jacket and was published by the Smithsonian. It is 271 pages of beautiful photographs and excellent story-telling. The book (catalog) tells the story of DY’s life as an artist in her own words but also through the other essays by her friends, curators, and the contribution of two of her sisters. It is a wonderful weaving of storied threads and by the time you get to the end of the book, you’ll have a feeling for how this renowned artist’s life was shaped and where some of her ideas come from. The book also does a good job of placing the artwork and DY’s life inside the Diné (Navajo) culture. If you don’t know much about this part of the world, you’re in for a wonderful surprise in the descriptions and photos included.
The book has images of the artist’s preparation for weaving a piece including notes about dyeing, images, and sketches. Sourcing materials is important to DY and she works hard to find the right colors for each work. Many of her yarns she dyes herself with natural dyes, some of which she gathers from her surroundings.
I’ve included some images from inside the book to give you a feel for it and to encourage you to either purchase your own copy or ask your library or guild to purchase it.
Begay designed a sash belt to go with this historic biil
A few years back the Denver Art Museum added a tapestry of DY’s to their collection called Intended Vermillion. I was living north of Denver then and took a trip in 2016 to visit this tapestry. Sublime Light (p. 53) describes the work in this way:
“Begay’s Intended Vermillion represents the formations and colorations of Vermillion Cliffs, the awe-inspiring rock formations in Coconino County, Arizona. The tapestry focuses on the way these spectacular mesas, buttes, and cliffs are conceived by the Diné in their language. Tsé łichíí’ dah nidaa’eeł, Begay says, is the term used to describe “the reddish rocks floating on the surface.” Tsé łichíí daniteel describes the long horizontal line of the reddish cliffs. Intended Vermillion speaks to how she and her fellow Diné share ways of observing and thinking about their surrounding world.”
Sublime Light has a two-page spread image of this work along with images of preparatory sketches, dye samples, and journal entries written before weaving began.
DY Begay, Intended Vermillion, Denver Art Museum, 2015. See THIS link for a better image. This photo is my snapshot when I visited the museum to see it.
DY Begay, Intended Vermillion (detail), collection of the Denver Art Museum. photo by Rebecca Mezoff
As anyone who sees Begay’s work will quickly realize, she is a master colorist. Her color sense along with her dye skills and weaving abilities make her work a deep expression of place. This book does a marvelous job of helping the reader feel that depth in both the essays and the images. We can imagine seeing night fall and watch Begay weave the experience of watching that into a tapestry.
Studying her work in person reveals gorgeous textures and colors crafted in wool and dye. Many of her pieces glow seemingly from the inside and this has to do with her use of color, her skill at dyeing, her choice of beautiful wools, and that particular magic hand that DY Begay brings to her woven wonders. If you can go to see the show in Washington D.C. before it closes in July, I guarantee you will learn a lot from being able to experience her work in person.
DY has a lot of experience working with museums. Her study and knowledge of historic and contemporary textiles, especially Diné rugs, is deep. She has traveled all over the world studying textile traditions everyone from Peru to Bhutan. She has worked as a curator, studied textiles in museum collections all over the world, and helped increase the understanding that Diné textile collections lacked cultural context (see pg 142). There is an essay in Sublime Light which talks about the influences and experience Begay has from her travels.
DY Begay talking about a textile in the Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2018. Photo by Rebecca Mezoff
DY Begay has learned her art from her family and her Diné tradition and she has transformed that knowledge into something both deeply of her culture and place while becoming a magnificent contemporary fiber artist. I find her ability to bring the deep knowledge of traditional Diné weaving into her very contemporary work while still giving the viewer the feeling that they are connected to a particular place and culture marvelous.
Book structure
Sublime Light was published by the Smithsonian and is divided into five chapters which are further divided into essays. Some of the chapters are written by DY Begay herself and include memories of her childhood and notes about her work. There are essays about particular things like her process and more general thoughts about how her work has evolved over her career.
There are wonderful essays about Diné culture and where Begay exists within it, about her younger sisters Berdine and Berdina who DY helped raise and continues to mentor in weaving, and information about Diné history and how that impacted weaving. I find it notable that some of the essay writers are Diné themselves. This tells me that the information they are giving me is rooted in culture and not something a curator divorced from this special knowledge would not have.
For example, Jennifer Nez Denetdale’s essay, “In Translation: DY Begay’s Art as Story and History,” starts by noting their shared clans and their relationship within the Diné culture and continues by exploring Begay’s work in the context of Diné kinship systems, cultural stories, and the particular history of Hwéeldi (The Long Walk and internment at Bosque Redondo).
The book is well indexed and the catalog portion includes long statements about each work from DY herself. The book provides a biography of the artist written from a variety of perspectives and the chronology of her life included at the end helps pull it all together.
There is a lot to digest about the history and importance of indigenous art. As an artist who is both indigenous and a woman, Begay’s insistence on her work being seen and her voice being heard in the art world is notable. This show and catalog are a beautiful tribute to an accomplished artist. I am quite sure we’ll hear a lot from DY Begay and enjoy her marvelous work for a long time to come.
An example of the catalog pages with DY Begay’s thoughts and stories about each piece.
With thanks
Rebecca, DY Begay, and Emily in Santa Fe in 2022. Visiting a fiber show of course!
If you have met DY Begay perhaps you have had the experience of feeling heard. She is a master listener and has a deep curiosity about other people and particularly their relationship to textiles. I want to thank DY for being such a friend to myself and to so many others who she has touched over the years all over the world.
DY, congratulations on this monumental show and book and may you continue to weave in beauty for many more decades.
DY Begay’s show, Sublime Light, is currently open at the National Museum of the American Indian through July 13, 2025. You can get your copy of this beautiful book when you go see it or you can order it HERE or from your local independent bookseller.
Ganteaume, C. R. & McLerran, J. (2024). Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay. Washington D. C.: Smithsonian Books.
Video from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston on the exhibition Collecting Stories: Native American art (3 minutes). https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/collecting-stories-native-american-art/d-y-begay
Talk from the weekend of Sublime Light’s opening. In Conversation: DY Begay with fiber artists Velma Kee Craig and Helena Hernmarck.