Remembering a place in fragments

I rarely remember places as complete scenes. What stays are fragments — a shopfront, a passing figure, a sign, a particular rhythm of buildings. This work grew out of that kind of remembering.

When I moved to The Hague in 2020, I remember feeling like a complete outsider, like someone who didn’t quite belong. One of the places where I felt most out of place was Noordeindestraat, a chic shopping street near Noordeinde Palace. I almost always took another route if I could, and if I absolutely had to pass through it, I would power-walk.

Five years into living in The Hague, the city has started to feel more and more like home. I’ve built connections to it and to the people in it. I have a favourite café where I have a usual order, a favourite bookstore where I have a discount card, an art-supply shop where people know me, and even a few places where I know I could quickly find a toilet in an emergency.

Noordeindestraat has become slightly less intimidating too. It helps that I’ve started imagining scenes I grew up around in Patan, Nepal, playing out in places like this. How intimidating can an art gallery really be if I can picture an old Newar grandfather outside it selling fresh juju dhau — the “king curd,” a Newari delicacy? Or a café terrace occupied by gossiping old ladies sunbathing?

I suppose this is one of the strange things about migration. Places begin to overlap in your mind. Memories from one city slip into another. Some places grow blurry, while others return in such fine detail that you start to wonder whether you have a photographic memory after all.

This print is the first time I’ve tried to make one of those imagined overlaps visible — to put on paper something I sometimes see in my head.

I wonder how many other people carry places this way too.