lost villages + st. lawrence river
When looking at my ancestors home towns, I was struck with wonder and grief when finding Louis Helbig's aerial art photography which documented aspects of the 1958 inundation of twelve communities, some of which dated back to the 1700s.
The clarity of the artist's photographs, the relationship between historical, ephemeral, and futuristic intrigued me enormously. I reflect through my drafted and painted boards, using watercolour and ink, on the realities of what aerial views offer us, of displacement of people and architecture, and on fleeting moments where traces are left to me uncovered.
Flooded, submerged and lost include fertile farmland, abundant orchards, old growth forests, creeks, the Long Sault Rapids, ancient lands of the Mohawk People, buried loved ones in their resting plots, as well as historical architecture and their villages and ports.
