july 12 - september 12, 2026
opening reception July 12, 2026 2-4pm
Behind VA Shadows, 2 Linden st., cambridge, ma 02138
in collaboration with art + everywhere

exhibition weekend itinerary / activations

curatorial statement

Inspired by the poem of the same title by e.e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled is a site-specific group exhibition that brings together a diverse, international group of artists engaging with place as an accumulation of lived moments. Their work transforms memory into a metaphorical landscape in which longing, nostalgia, and the self are emotional architectures built and to be wandered through.

An installation forming a sort of “memory map,” the exhibition’s contours and elevations are shaped by the universal impulse to preserve a moment in time, real or imagined, as an act of self-definition and connection. Linking individual human experiences into a shared narrative, memory serves as both a reference point and a compass: a way of defining ourselves and finding one another. 

Located at Behind VA Shadows in Harvard Square, a site with layers of personal and collective history, somewhere i have never travelled activates a set of windows on Linden Street, along Mass Ave. Embedded into the labyrinthine walkways of Cambridge, MA, the exhibition is a serendipitous invitation into a series of personal geographies, itself becoming a micro-geography: a place within a place about the places we are.

This exhibition is co-curated by Brenda Melgoza Ciardiello and Stéphanie Williams in collaboration with Behind VA Shadows and Art + Everywhere, organizations that prioritize community, access, and radical generosity within artistic endeavors.

poem

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands