Finding connection in northern travel
For Yellowknifer Wessam Bou‑Saleh, art has always been less about perfect lines and more about capturing a feeling, a moment suspended between movement and stillness.
An architect by day and a multimedia artist by night, Wessam is the 2026 Northwest Territories winner of the Northwestel Directory Art Contest. His winning piece, ‘Connections,’ reflects the uniquely northern experience of air travel, where small terminals, familiar faces, and ritualised movement link communities across vast distances.
Wessam with his dog Atlas
Capturing the ritual of northern air travel
Air travel in the North is a uniquely intimate experience. Unlike the vast airports and massive aircraft of southern cities, northern terminals and the small planes that serve them are built to a human scale.
‘Connections’ grew out of the rhythm Wessam knows well from travelling to communities across the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. He describes how airport terminals can differ from one another, yet still share familiar elements, and how the repeated movements of arrival and departure became central to what he wanted to express.
The piece reflects the ritualistic nature of northern air travel, moving from vehicle to building, to airstrip, to aircraft, and thousands of feet above the land before returning once again to gravel underfoot. He originally imagined the composition from the perspective of someone seated inside the plane, framed by the window, before the concept evolved.
“It’s like this little building that’s a connection to everything,” Wessam says. “You can come from the biggest, busiest airport and then come to this two‑room, three‑room building.” He describes these terminals as a kind of bottleneck point, small in scale but essential in function.
The painting also brings time into the same frame. After encountering a photograph from the 1980s while reading about northern architecture, Wessam was struck by how similar the experience felt to today. The scene feels timeless, equally belonging to the early days of air travel in the territory or to a journey taken just last week.
“Connections” Oil on canvas • 20 inches × 26 inches
From experimentation to recognition
Wessam has been drawing for as long as he can remember and is largely self-taught in his artistic practice. Working across a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, woodburning, and metal, he approaches art as a space for exploration and experimentation.
Looking back, he describes a surprising frustration at the heart of those early years, trying to understand where the outline of what he was seeing actually began and ended. That tension still shows up in his style today, which leans into looseness and suggestion rather than strict precision.
“Trying to convey as much as possible with as little as possible,” he says, describing his artistic approach. He also describes his work as “sketchy” and “not very refined,” noting that even when he tried to keep edges aligned in architecture school, the real enjoyment was in the preliminary sketching, where he could “free flow” and see how things take shape.
Growing up, his parents were supportive of artistic interests, though he regretfully felt the broader expectation, in school and beyond, that art was not seen as a viable profession. Ultimately, architecture became his career, allowing him to continue drawing and thinking spatially, while art remained a personal pursuit.
Over time, the encouragement he found through friends and fellow artists became an important part of his creative life.
Wessam painting at his home in Yellowknife
Finding inspiration in the North
Having lived in Yellowknife for the past eight years, Wessam continues to draw inspiration from both the natural and built environments of the North. While the aurora often captures attention, he says it is the quieter shifts in light that consistently stay with him, especially the glowing, colourful sunsets, and the way light plays across snow and treelines through the seasons.
“It was mostly for me, it was the sunsets and the pinks and the oranges of the sunset – they’re so beautiful,” he says. “It’s so rich watching sunsets in all seasons, and how it plays with the snow in the wintertime and how it plays with the treeline in the summer and autumn. It’s really beautiful here.”
Wessam also notes the regular appearance of sundogs and moondogs, describing the latter as “giving a moment of peace at night.”
That attentiveness to light, movement, and transition is woven throughout his work, and nowhere more clearly than in ‘Connections.’ His creative process mirrors that same patience. It is slow, reflective, and shaped by self‑doubt as much as persistence.
“I have a lot of self‑doubt when it comes to painting,” Wessam admits. “My process is talking myself up for a long, long time, and going, doing baby steps to ultimately get it done.”
Music often accompanies that process. “I love listening to music while I paint,” he says, explaining that he likes to time “really emotive strokes” to “really sweeping music,” often soundtracks or the serenades of iconic Irish singer Enya.
Wessam’s northern inspiration is vividly expressed in a Yellowknife mural he created in collaboration with Don Uson, a freelance graphic designer and 3D artist. Located on Franklin Avenue, the Augment YK Mural project was organized by Western Arctic Moving Pictures (WAMP) and depicts a fireweed plant emerging from a burning forest floor. It is also a multimedia work: When viewed through the Artivive app, the mural reveals the phrase “I love Yellowknife” on a viewer’s phone screen, displayed in multiple languages.
Tongues by Wessam Bou-Saleh and Josh Udon located at Quality Furniture
Looking ahead
While architecture remains his day‑to‑day work, Wessam is already thinking about what comes next creatively. He hopes to return to painting more regularly and to continue exploring sculptural metalwork and jewellery design, building on skills he began developing through a silversmithing course in Yellowknife.
For now, he hopes his work encourages others to trust their instincts and take small steps toward creative expression.
“Put anything to paper. Small steps, even just setting up your space,” he says. “Don’t even paint that day, just set it up so that you’re ready.” He adds, “Don’t think that you have to follow a certain technique – forge your path.”
With ‘Connections,’ Wessam offers more than an image. He offers a quiet reminder of the small moments that bind northern communities together, one flight, one arrival, one shared journey at a time.
As the winner of the Northwestel Directory Art Contest, Wessam Bou-Saleh receives a $5,000 prize from Northwestel. His winning artwork, ‘Connections,’ captures the uniquely northern rhythm of air travel, reflecting the small terminals, familiar faces, and shared journeys that link communities across vast distances.
For 47 years, Northwestel has proudly featured northern art on the covers of our directories. Inspired by the land and lived experiences of the North, these works celebrate the creativity and connections that define the people and places we call home.
Thinking about submitting your artwork for next year's Directory Art Contest? Visit our Directory Art page and keep an eye out for the 2027 contest, opening in September.
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Photography by Hannah Edan
