Art Exhibition - Sam van Strien: Traces of Displacement

Durham Art Guild presents Traces of Displacement, an exhibition of works by Sam van Strien, developed during his 2024–25 residency at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in East Tennessee.

Through rubbings, drawings, laser-cut engravings, and archival texts, van Strien examines the architectural and historical legacy of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). His work reflects on how displacement—of buildings, landscapes, and communities—became a precondition for the accumulation of capital and the reshaping of regional identity.

A New Deal program that transformed the Tennessee Valley through dams and electrification, the TVA brought both progress and profound loss. Entire towns were submerged, thousands displaced, and vernacular structures uprooted in the name of modernization. Van Strien’s works trace these tensions between infrastructural power and local resilience. Rubbings and engravings of cabins from the Museum of Appalachia, many themselves displaced by flooding, become tactile witnesses to layered histories.

Screen-printed maps and testimonies appear alongside drawings inspired by Arrowmont’s historic weaving collection, opening dialogues between grids, textures, and material culture in Appalachia. The resulting works interlace architectural impressions, archival fragments, and woven patterns, reflecting on how histories of place are remembered and reimagined.

Sam van Strien is a visual artist exploring how architecture and capitalism shape urban space. He holds an MFA from Ohio State University and a BA from Central Saint Martins, London. His work has been exhibited internationally, and he will join Indiana University in 2026 as Assistant Professor of Architecture.