Reconstruction in Color
Certain forms recur: houses, streets, vertical structures, traces of vegetation. Yet they never return unchanged.
Reconstruction in Color is Tara's central body of work — an ongoing series of paintings in acrylic and oil on canvas that examines the experience of migration through the language of colour and urban architecture. Working from the streets of Enschede, Tara does not depict the city as it appears, but as it is felt: familiar facades rendered in heightened, non-naturalistic palettes that function as emotional maps of belonging, displacement, and the persistent question of what we mean when we say home.
The series has been in active development since 2024, with works including Veil, Stillness, Trace, Inward, Root, and Ariënsplein — each painting a distinct psychological portrait of a place, and together forming a cumulative record of re-rooting in a new country.
In 2026 the series received a development grant from het Cultuurfonds, one of the Netherlands' leading cultural funds. For an artist working at the intersection of migration, identity and visual culture, this recognition marks a meaningful institutional endorsement of the work — and a commitment to seeing the series through to its next phase. The grant supports the continued production of new paintings within the series, with future exhibition and publication plans to be announced.
With thanks to voordekunst and het Cultuurfonds, made possible in part by the Fonds Versterking Culturele Sector Provincie Overijssel.