River of Their Passing

In the worldview of the Yup’ik people of Alaska, migrating salmon that have died after spawning leave their “canoes” on the banks of lakes and rivers so that their spirits may travel overland back to the sea. The imagery in River of Their Passing draws on this conceptualization, and then envisages the flesh of another migrating species, that of the caribou, assisting the salmon spirits in their terrestrial journey home. From this perspective, the bodies of the caribou become an alternate boat for the spirits of the salmon, alluding not only to an ongoing and unbroken circle of time, but also suggesting the co-mingling and interpenetration of the material and the spiritual, the corporeal and the incorporeal. River of Their Passing images an existence in which there is no real division between past, present and future, and in which there is no separation between the world of the living and the world beyond.