Exhibitor #23b (Wayne Sawchuk) 

Title: Strange Teepees on the Peace

Medium: Photograph

For Sale: $200 (unprinted, unframed)

Artist Statement: The third major hydro-electric dam on the Peace River, the Site C Dam, is under construction. These “teepees” of wood are the most efficient way to pile trees for burning as the reservoir is stripped. Their evocative shapes echo the traditional homes of First Nations who lived on this land since time immemorial, and who now have to make way, whether they like it or not, for the floodwaters which will drown this valley and a good chunk of their ancestral homelands as the reservoir is filled. These are the last teepees which will ever be pitched in these productive, temperate bottomlands.