The work of Diné artist DY Begay, now on view at the National Museum of the American Indian, blends tradition and modernity

Alicia Ault

Museums Correspondent

An indigo snake crawls across a red tapestry.

The tapestry is edged with blue at the top and bottom and features an undulating line of the same color that appears to slither across the top quarter. The work is a flat rectangle of wool, but the vibrancy of the colors makes it seem almost alive.

The piece, Monumental Edge 2, is one of 48 tapestries by DY Begay on display in “Sublime Light,” an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian that runs through July 2025.

While Begay, who is Diné (or Navajo), has exhibited her work often in the American Southwest, she is perhaps not as familiar elsewhere. The National Museum of the American Indian aims to change that, for Begay and others. The museum is well-positioned to “call attention to incredibly talented artists that are well-known in the Native American art world in Santa Fe but are not really all that well-known in the mainstream art world,” says associate curator Cécile R. Ganteaume.

That mainstream world “has woken up and is finally paying attention to contemporary Native American artists,” says Ganteaume.

In the exhibition’s catalog, the curator describes Begay’s art as “at once fundamentally modern and essentially Diné.”

“What makes her art fundamentally modern is that it’s very expressive of who she is as an individual artist,” says Ganteaume. Begay’s tapestries “are highly distinctive, and they’re based on her own unique aesthetic, which she has developed over time.”

The “essentially Diné” part comes from the recognizable patterns and motifs, the use of Churro wool from sheep raised on Navajo land, the centuries-old weaving techniques, and Begay’s belief that the female deity known as Spider Womangifted the tribe with the knowledge and practice of weaving. Begay is involved in every step of the process—from raising and shearing sheep to collecting materials to make dyes to dying the wool to weaving the tapestry. She estimates that the weaving alone for each tapestry takes four or five months.

Begay’s homeland, Tselani, a settlement on the Navajo reservation in the northeastern corner of Arizona, serves as her primary muse. “I love the place where I live,” Begay says. “There’s just so much inspiration in the place—the sunrise, the sunset, the rock formations,” even the colors of the soil.

It is a land defined by sandstone cliffs and variegated mesas and crossed by dry arroyos that become raging rivers during rainstorms.

“My weavings have become an intimate response to the topography of my origin,” writes Begay in the catalog.

To view the collection of tapestries is to be transported to that harshly beautiful environment. It should also give visitors “an idea of what a contemporary Navajo weaver artist is creating today,” says Begay. And with each piece “there’s something special, something very personal and even private,” she says.

Begay frequently reflects on her creations—before, during and after they are made. Both the exhibition and the catalog include sketches and journal entries. For Monumental Edge 2, completed in 2016, Begay wrote that red had special meaning: “What does it do to me? It gives me energy. It energizes my eyes, my fingers and my hands. That’s red.”

The tapestry includes 22 different shades of red, Ganteaume says. The indigo in the work also contains multiple shades. A distinguishing aspect of Begay’s work is her ability “to create a sense of pulsating color,” weaving almost the way an artist would create a watercolor painting, says Ganteaume.

Intended Vermillion is another piece that demonstrates her mastery of color. The tapestry was inspired by the Vermilion Cliffs sandstone formations in northern Arizona, says Begay. She wrote in a journal page that her imagination and interpretation of the structures projected waves and streaks “sweeping across the surface of the sandstone walls and elongated horizontal waves extending and bending in and around cliffs that appear endless.”

To make the dye baths for the colors, Begay described in her journal that she planned on using the pigment-producing cochineal insect and madder roots for red, and local plants such as Navajo tea, rabbitbrush, marigold and sagebrush to get yellow.

The final tapestry interweaves hues of brown, yellow, black and red to create a vision that is both natural and abstract.

Though Begay may begin a tapestry with sketches and ideas for color, the piece often evolves, depending on what is produced by her dye baths and what happens once she sits at the loom. “Nature is always in flux, and so she tries to emulate that notion in her weaving, not to be determined, not to try to force anything, because that’s not what happens in nature,” Ganteaume says.

Begay’s free flow is rooted in a lifetime of technique. She is a fifth-generation weaver, learning at the side of her female forebears. She often wove as a child but only occasionally made pieces during her high school years at reservation-based boarding schools. Begay always had an interest in the weaving of other cultures, in particular Chilkat weaving, practiced by tribes in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and British Columbia. After high school graduation, Begay traveled to Vancouver to see Chilkat weaving in person.

She studied fiber art at Arizona State University. Begay kept weaving, occasionally selling pieces to help pay rent and tuition. In 1982, she and her new husband, Howie Meyer, a filmmaker, moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he had family.

The experience was jarring: “Everything was different, strange. I didn’t have a horizon. I didn’t have the blue skies or the sunsets,” says Begay.

But she started visiting the National Museum of the American Indian in New York and was inspired. She set up a loom and began weaving again, but with a different focus and purpose than what she’d learned as a child. She meditated on how she could keep up the tradition while also expressing herself.

Begay was especially motivated by Swedish fiber artist Helena Hernmarck, whom she met in 1987. Hernmarck’s work is known for its blending of colors.

After her son was born, Begay moved back to Tselani in 1989. She and her husband built a hogan and a studio, and she reconnected with her homeland.

One of her first tapestries showcasing her new direction was The Natural, completed in 1994. It contains many Diné figurative elements, such as repeating crosses. But it is more elaborate, with designs cascading down the tapestry.

“That one is when I really started going outside of my design, you know, just breaking out of the regional style,” says Begay.

The tapestry “signals a significant new direction and an assertion of individual artistic autonomy, perhaps most cogently expressed by the artist’s inclusion of her initials in the piece, signifying individual authorship,” writes Native American art scholar Jennifer McLerran in the catalog.

When The Natural was first displayed at the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, viewers were confused, unsure of which Diné style it was. According to McLerran, Begay told them, “It’s my style, it’s my creation.”

Begay has won dozens of awards in the decades since, many at the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market and also at the Heard Museum market.

She has been accepted and embraced for her artistry.

“My great-great-great-grandmother wove for utilitarian purposes,” she says. But weaving has evolved. “Today, you see more weavers expressing their artistic talent.”

Get the latest on what’s happening At the Smithsonian in your inbox.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-an-indigenous-weavers-mastery-of-color-infuses-her-tapestries-with-a-life-force-180985280/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&spMailingID=50323058&spUserID=MTI1MzcyNjIxNjk1NAS2&spJobID=2802014595&spReportId=MjgwMjAxNDU5NQS2