An artist’s wistful survey of his demolished childhood home

In his beautiful and poignant work Ever Behind the Sunset, the US artist and filmmaker Jason Mitcham pays tribute to his childhood home in North Carolina, which today exists only in memory. Working from maps, family VHS tapes and photographs, he creates moving images thick with paint in an elegy to the quiet and untamed slice of Earth where he grew up, which since 2011 has been seized, partitioned, paved over, developed into suburban sprawl, marketed and sold. Featuring source audio from the home videos and a lullaby sung by his mother, the work is far more than just a political statement; it is also a deeply personal one, especially in the wake of his parents’ deaths. Through this wistful survey of land which collapses past and present, Mitcham prompts deeper questions about place, memory and how the two intersect. To learn more about how Ever Behind the Sunset was made, watch this short documentary.