Walking Through the City — KunstenLandschap 2026

Over the Pinksteren weekend, I showed a selection of paintings from my ongoing series Reconstruction in Color as part of the 26th edition of KunstenLandschap.

The paintings begin with places I move through in everyday life — streets, corners, buildings, and quiet routes around Enschede that slowly became part of my daily experience. I’m not interested in painting them realistically. I use color more emotionally, so the works become less about documenting a place and more about memory, atmosphere, and the feeling of living inside a city.

In these paintings, the city gradually turns into something psychological. Familiar spaces shift through color and become slightly uncertain — somewhere between recognition and distance. I often think about how certain places continue to stay with us over time, especially after relocation, and how memory can slowly reconstruct ordinary spaces into something more internal and emotional.

Showing this work during KunstenLandschap felt meaningful to me because the exhibition itself unfolds through movement and landscape. People arrive slowly, by walking or cycling through the area, and I liked that rhythm. It gave the work space to breathe and to be experienced without hurry.

This year’s edition also included a presentation of works by Ger Dekkers at Rijksmuseum Twenthe. His work explored the relationship between people and landscape, and although my approach is very different, I feel connected to that same question of how we carry places with us and how environments shape the way we see and remember.

I’m grateful to the KunstenLandschap team, the volunteers, and everyone who made this edition possible.

- Tara Haghi