OKLAHOMA PARKLANDS: A MEDITATION

“Unfold your own myth.”—Rumi

Land splits open, sky spills through
Come, gather in this split open space

2023

Oklahoma Parklands: A Meditation (installation video), projected digital landscape photographs, digital collage, poetic meditative texts

Invokes eco-therapeutic principles to forge sense of interconnectedness with our land(scapes) as force of healing, as history’s repository, in gratitude to the earth and its custodians. Shifting imagery embraces visitors with spectacular scenery through immersive, interactive video projections. Oklahoma's majestic terrain presents a luminous setting of enigmatic, digitally altered images.

Photocredit for installation shots: Melissa Lukenbaugh
154’L x 12’H, projection mapping installation views

OKPOP Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Photocredit for installation shots: Melissa Lukenbaugh

Photocredit for installation shot: Dan Farnum
154’L x 12’H, projection mapping installation views

Photocredit: Sarah Ahmad
154’L x 12’H, & 27’ x 12’, projection mapping installation views

Photocredit for installation shots: Dan Farnum
154’L x 12’H, & 27’ x 12’, projection mapping installation views

Seeking deeper connections with our land(scapes) as a force of healing, of spiritual energies, as repositories of our histories, we offer our gratitude to the land and its custodians as we unfold our own futures.

Oklahoma Parklands: A Meditation invokes eco-therapeutic principles to forge a sense of interconnectedness with the earth. Using light itself to position the viewer’s own body as a living support for the shifting imagery, Oklahoma Parklands: A Meditation embraces and surrounds visitors with spectacular scenery through immersive, interactive video projections. Oklahoma's majestic terrain presents a luminous setting of enigmatic, digitally altered images. For years, Ahmad has sought to impart her own sense of the sublime, restorative potential of nature through immersive art installation. In Oklahoma Parklands: A Meditation Ahmad’s ethereal mindscapes are designed to spark spiritual engagement with the earth.

Like much of Ahmad’s work, Oklahoma Parklands: A Meditation offers a transformative communal space. It presents an offering, honoring nature as a site of refuge and renewal. This expansion phase of Ahmad’s 2022 statewide Stories From the Core installation brings the immersive experience of Oklahoma’s public land Tulsa’s art district.

Artwork, installation design, & project by Sarah Ahmad
Mediations by Sarah & Maryam Ahmad
Video with Brandon Pade
Projection mapping designs and artwork by Sarah Ahmad
Projection mapping with Erin Turner

“There is no more radical agenda—
“radical in the sense of getting to the roots of our problems,
“which lie in the deep recesses of culture and mind.
“The promise of ecotherapy lies in the possibility
“that such work can initiate healing
“rooted in our affinity with the natural world
“and can sponsor sanity in a world gone mad.
“In time it might restore our rootedness in particular places,
“based not on intellectual abstractions
“of religion, philosophy, or ideology
“but on the tug of something already deep inside us.” — David Orr

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”―Rumi

“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”―Rumi

Primordial light
the oldest light in the universe
in the deep sky
holding star stories
our stories

Linked to hidden territories in our memories,
what could the earth reveal,
by opening its heart to show gashes
and blood spilt in its name?

The magic of rocks
lies in their heaviness, their weight
the way they fill up space,
refusing to easily bend to human will
subject only to the forces of wind and water,
eroding in jagged layers, disappearing
over centuries, leaving traces of their wisdom behind.

Whisper
your grief to the land
imagine the earth absorbing it
from your rooted feet
imagine it turning into a seed
deep within the soil
soon to emerge in a new,
beautiful form to greet the sun
offer a thanks and a blessing
to the earth for its work of regeneration.

The land conceals and preserves our history,
carrying multiple burdens,
displaced indigenous peoples,
legacies of racial discrimination,
disparities in access to natural resources,
histories of ecological devastation.

Tell me a story about the water
where it came from, where it’s going,
the secrets it carries,
the mysteries of its many shapes.

Let yourself turn wild,
dancing furiously, scatter yourself,
scatter your grief around you like seeds,
the wind will carry these seeds away,
and many seasons from now, new growth will bloom.

Come, look at these gentle folds of earth
monuments to the wild, honoring the edge of things,
unforgiving in their beauty,
so human in the way they grieve.

There is a sanctity to the way wild things decay,
a precision to their falling apart
let our dissolutions all be so particular, beautiful, brave.

In the forest, new growth depends on decay
trees rot into the soil, organisms eat away at leaves,
yet the new forms that take their place
carry the memory of all that was lost,
everything becoming eternal,
remnants etched into our bones.

Layers of the earth’s core
calls to our layered identities,
to the processes of negotiating these identities,
in our adopted homes.

At first glance, the forest seems still,
but for the trees bowing with the wind,
leaves whispering under your feet.
notice the living and breathing
and dying that’s happening all around you
molecules shifting shape, cells regenerating,
plants making magic from the light.
You, too, are ever-transforming,
slowly becoming something strange, something new.

Rocks preserve histories,
of the land, of our ancestors,
of both terrestrial and marine life,
histories of extinction and extension of lives,
histories that make us aware of
our place in the scheme of things.

Tell me a story about the water
where it came from, where it’s going,
the secrets it carries,
the mysteries of its many shapes.

Listen to the sounds of theses pictures
lake water gulping on the shore,
wind making melodies with the leaves
now listen even closer,
to the soft-pitched whispers of the trees
doesn’t it sound like they are saying, stay?
Stay, they whisper, over and over again.
It’s worth it.

Light dances on moving water
small suns rest on
the surface of the lake itself
an infinite reflection, a mirror
to the soft parts of ourselves
peer into the water and tell me
what otherworldly things you see.

Feel your heartbeat
take note of its rhythm, the steady pulse of blood
this beat is your body pushing back against grief
the fist-sized muscle of your heart telling grief,
you can stay, but you can’t swallow me.

Repair our access to nature, the mutual care
that has been denied and ruptured
by systems of power that keep communities marginalized.

A new form of belonging that transcends borders,
is shaped by access to nature
a reciprocal relationship of
healing and belonging
while honoring its history and legacy,
while preserving our own cultures and histories.

A future of belonging with the earth,
as an integral part of creation,
a spiritual connection with nature,
a cosmic interconnectedness.

Tall grasses make music with the wind,
a low-pitched melody to fill your dreams.
Hum this song of the prairie to yourself,
surrendering to its magic and peace.

Belonging: a process of continually engaging
and growing with the natural world
in conversation with the land we inhabit,
the larger eco-system that we are a part of;
belonging with the community and
belonging with the earth without claiming it;
embodied belonging, embodied connections
creating a space to share stories
and dream new futures.

Liquid light
pouring across the fields
illuminating the vast stretches of the prairie
wind blowing hard through it
against the deepening night sky.

Walking in the woods under the green canopies provides retreat
fallen giants, trees uprooted from storms
become habitats for a new life
releasing fear and trauma,
soak in beauty through filtered patterns of light.

Leaves shed, trees undress,
baring hidden networks
mirroring the flow
through our own bodies
we are all interconnected
in the web of life.

Enveloped within the landscapes,
we bear witness to histories
of displacement and extraction,
Who has access to land
and who is “nature deprived”?
The earth offers itself to us
for healing and sustenance;
how do we honor its legacy?
What reciprocal relationships
can we foster with the land?

Offering a space of contemplation,
dreaming,
and healing for our communities
the earth acts as a non linear archive.

Land Acknowledgement, contributed by Julie Pearson Little Thunder

Oklahoma sits on Native lands occupied for millennia by the Caddos and Wichitas, used by other tribes for hunting and gathering, and designated “Indian Territory” in 1830 for the forcible Removal of the southeastern Muskogee, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw peoples. Subsequent broken treaties, forced removals and displacements have resulted in a total of 39 federally recognized tribal nations living here.

Storyboards by Sarah Ahmad
12 storyboards with multiple transitions within each. Evolution of storyboard mock ups to guide the projection mapping design process.