Elimination of Innocence – Tear Drop Triptych

Stream has long been inspired and haunted by a tragic true story of colonization and greed from Unga Island, AK. In the late 1700s 25 young Aleut women were taken captive by Russian traders. On the journey to Siberia, two girls escaped, enraging an officer, who killed a girl on the spot. Some women who saw this jumped from the boat, drowning. To cover up the incident, officers had the rest of the women thrown off the ship to their deaths.


From this terrible story Stream has conjured beauty: a triptych honoring the murdered women that shows their spirits transformed into birds, and their rebirth hovering in the form of butterflies. All of nature mourns the loss of innocence, as twenty five birds fly across the paper, and the noble birds on their headdresses shed tears.