Mentally Here started from one of those moments when I really wanted to be somewhere else.
There were days when I felt like I needed more space, more air, more distance from the room I was in. Normally I would try to go outside, drive somewhere, or find a place that felt a little quieter. But sometimes I just stayed where I was.
So I started looking at places online instead.
Beaches, mountains, waterfalls, gardens, cities. Some were places I had been to, some were places I missed, some were places I had always wanted to see, and some I knew nothing about until I found them.
I spent a lot of time reading, watching videos, looking at maps, and learning the stories behind these places. At some point, it stopped feeling like research and started feeling more like daydreaming.
That’s how Mentally Here slowly became a collection of 256 places.
For me, these works are not really about geography. They are about the way a place can stay with us. A city can remind us of home. A landscape can remind us of someone. A place we have never visited can still feel strangely familiar.
I also kept thinking that maybe I’m not the only one who feels this way. Maybe there are other people out there who sometimes want to be somewhere else too — somewhere quieter, somewhere familiar, somewhere they miss, or somewhere they have only ever imagined.
I made this collection from that feeling, and I hope some of these places can give you a small moment to pause, remember, daydream, or simply be somewhere else for a while.
Physically here. Mentally somewhere else.
Samanta, 2026
The 256 Places
Mentally Here brings together 256 places : beaches, mountains, waterfalls, gardens, cities, and a few places that only exist in the imagination.
Most of them are real places I found while wandering through maps, videos, articles, and images online. Some were already familiar to me, while others were completely new.
Each work has its own location, but I don’t really see them as destinations. I see them more like little containers for memory, longing, curiosity, or whatever feeling someone brings into them.
Maybe you know the place. Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you’ve always wanted to go. Or maybe you just feel something when you see it.
How It Came Together
I spent a lot of time researching these places before making the works. I would open maps, watch videos, read about how a landscape was formed, how a garden came to exist, or what kind of stories people attached to a place.
Sometimes I started with an image and ended up staying for the story.
Somewhere along the way, research stopped feeling like research. It became its own kind of daydreaming.
That process became a big part of Mentally Here - looking, learning, imagining, and letting myself mentally travel somewhere without actually leaving the room.
