Lewis Ableidinger

Farland is a project that uses the landscapes of the northern Great Plains of North America to explore themes of memory, life, death, and afterlife. As one gets older the prospect of death becomes more prevalent, not only of your own life but of those around you. People you envisioned living forever when you were young are suddenly gone, and you know the same fate awaits you at some point in the future. Farland allows me to explore some of the questions about the afterlife and perhaps even find solace in that no one is ever really gone if we remember them. Perhaps the bird we see perched outside our window is even someone paying us a visit. The project doesn’t seek to answer questions, but explore possibilities.

Farland intermingles the past and present, sometimes blurring the lines between reality and an imagined place, and perhaps asks more questions than it answers. What becomes of us once we pass on? Do we ever actually leave this earth? Does the afterlife look different from our current reality? What becomes of what we left behind?

“Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we
are escaped.”
-Psalm 124

Website lewisableidinger.com