Carla de Sousa

Time is one of the most enthralling subjects that captivates me. My experience of it is neither fixed nor linear, though reason insists on measuring it as such.

There are days that unfold like months, and years that vanish in the span of an hour; seconds that bleed into endless minutes; present, past and future locked in a ceaseless dance of becoming. Time is circular. I say this not with scientific intent, nor to assert any scholarly claim, but simply because it reveals itself to me in that form.

There are moments when I feel myself a child once more, memories returning in waves; others when I glimpse a future not yet lived, pulling me forward with quiet urgency. At times I feel older than the world itself; at others, I observe my surroundings as though I had already stepped beyond them. I know not everyone senses time in this way. And yet, linear time is merely a framework — a construct we use to navigate the fragile path between our alpha and our omega.

The four images I have chosen for this modest essay are a meditation on time: the relentless time that lays itself upon our being; the time of blossoming and creation; the time of rupture and revolt; and the time of return — to reflection, to solitude, to the origin.

Within this timeline, self-representation becomes the thread of a living performance — one shaped by spatial light and by the eternal quest to balance shadow and radiance in our daily existence. Through symbolic and poetic gestures, I attempt to rewrite my own inner knowing, inscribing it upon a timeline and a space that are mine alone — both deeply personal and achingly intimate.

Leiria, June 2025, Carla de Sousa

© 2025 Carla de Sousa