Biography
Dean West is an artist and researcher from Gumbaynggirr Country (Bellingen, NSW) who currently lives and works in Narrm / Melbourne, Victoria. His family is from Myanmar and he is a proud queer person.
Dean makes process-based, methodologically driven art. His work is research-led, place-based and context-specific. His practice gravitates towards time-based mediums like performance, moving image, and art interventions and for the past four years, he has been working in experimental stop-motion animation.
Dean's work is trans-scalar and explores assemblages of environments, local cultures, waste, desires, and issues central to the communities he works in and with. Social practice—especially collaborative research—is central to his art-making process. Dean lived in Alice Springs for three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and before this travelled frequently to Thailand and Nepal to work on collaborative projects.
Dean would like to acknowledge that the land, waters, and skies around him are the unceded and ancestral Countries of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. He extends his sincerest thanks and respect to the Elders of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung, past, present, and emerging, and reflects with humility and gratitude on the many lands he has lived and worked on in his life.
c. Mischa Baka, 2022