3rd Place Winner

In these days of climate crisis, the sin eater is an invocation and intersection with forgotten histories and restless spirits. Hand stitched glass beaded beaver fur are a ”second skin” cape or blanket for the complicit, echoing the laments of the lodge ladies and their songs of solastalgia.

Old sins cast long shadows. In 1946, beavers from Manitoba, Canada (land where the spirit lives) were released in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (land of fire/the end of the world). Seventy five years+, these now 200,000 beavers are wreaking havoc on a sensitive rainforest ecosystem. They are hunted and killed in the same manner that Colonizers exterminated the Indigenous Selknam peoples.

In earlier times, for a sixpence, some bread and ale, you could buy salvation from the sin eater. In contrast, offerings were given each year to the Pachamama in celebration of humanity and nature for the/gifts of “the land”.Green in the fur and beads , is for life/death and the hope for the endurance of Mother Nature. Orange, like the beaver teeth, are for embracing selflessness, sacrifice, and paths too perfection. And for the fire needed to burn impurities and allow transformation.