Elimination of Innocence Triptych – Magpie Tear Drop

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. 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. All of nature mourns the loss of innocence, as 25 birds fly across the paper, and their noble headdresses shed tears.

Birds shown: Magpies, yellow-rumped warbler.