Elsewhere / The Prairie Was Ours: Artist Talk by Elizabeth Burden

Through the work of three artists-Elizabeth Burden, Willa Ahlschwede, and Marci Sue Black-the exhibition “Elsewhere / The Prairie Was Ours” positions the prairie as a site where stories are entangled across generations, geographies, and historical conditions. Situated within ongoing public debates about land, settlement, identity, and United States history, “Elsewhere” considers how the prairie functions as both material landscape and ideological terrain shaped by settler colonialism, migration, and inherited narratives of place, which remain in rhizomatic relation. In this artist talk, Burden will engage audiences in thinking about the layered histories of the landscapes we inherit and how art can create space to unearth and unsettle, remember, and reimagine them.

Burden is the Great Plains Art Museum’s 2026 Elizabeth Rubendall Artist in Residence. “Elsewhere / The Prairie Was Ours” is on view at the Great Plains Art Museum Aug. 25 to Dec. 19, 2026.

Burden is an artist who engages in artistic archivy: the blending multidisciplinary studio work with social practice to reflect on the past/present/future. She is intrigued by the pull of archives, the construction of histories, ephemeral inheritances, the role of memory and narrative, and the ways we make sense of it all. She uses a variety of media to create space for critical thinking, critical feeling, and critical reflection that may lead to a re-imagining of possibilities. She was born and raised in Lincoln; as the great-granddaughter of the first Black homesteaders in Nebraska (Henry and Mary Burden), she is a third-generation Nebraskan, now living in the Southwest.

Photo by Deanna Dent