illusions of death and resurrection

Winter dances  are elaborately staged performances featuring masked dancers and ingenious mechanical devices that create illusions of death and resurrection and other astounding manifestations of supernatural power and presences. In this context, animal representations, most notably masks, are related to but are conceptually distinct from the potlatch proper. During these initiation rituals, encounters with supernatural powers occur either as spirit possession or theatrical simulation

A series of conventions in Northwest Coast art permits the parts of animals to represent the entire creatures - eg, a raven's beak, beaver's teeth, whale's flukes. Two animals frequently share a single body, or a single animal is split at the face or along the backbone to create 2 bilaterally symmetrical profiles; animal parts are rearranged from their biological locations; some are placed inside other animals, or intertwined with them. All these conventions create great formal and iconographic complexities.
Most obviously in the winter dances, but also widely recognizable in other Northwest Coast iconography, is the theme of transformation or metamorphosis between beings of the land, sea and sky, and ultimately between the domains of the living and the dead. A special type of transformation mask has double faces operated by strings so that an outer (usually animal) face opens to reveal a human face within. Masks frequently have movable eyes, jaws and other parts.
Three major styles have been identified - Northern, Central and Southern, corresponding to the major cultural divisions which are used by anthropologists.
   

Transformation Mask, Open
A transformation mask expresses the theme of metamorphosis between beings of the land, sea and sky. Mask of cedar and ermine tails by Ken Mowat     

Transformation Mask, Closed
Transformation mask by Ken Mowat shown closed