I recently learned that among the Aymara people of the Andes, time is not a line that stretches forward. The past lies ahead – visible, familiar, shaped by memory. While the future comes from behind, hidden from view, silent and unknowable. One walks into tomorrow guided by what has already been seen.[1]

The latest exhibition at Appleton Square, Sem pisar o chão[2] by Nuno Sousa Vieira, and at Appleton Box, Perder o nome by Dayana Lucas, made me reflect on the reversal of our perspective of time. What happens if you make time something open, almost infinite? Can you expand time?

Nuno Sousa Vieira puts the past right in front of us. 22240 floor tiles from his studio, one for every day of his life, are scattered, layered, spread across the floor. Desviar-se do ‘bom caminho’ turns the ground into a map of memories. Meticulously painted and divided into three actions ‘archiving’, ‘(re)archiving’, and ‘(de)archiving’, the accumulation resists nostalgia. Instead, it stages memory and identity as an ongoing dialogue, a spatial practice. Are we ever simply remembering – or are we, by necessity, rewriting?

Visão embaçada, a series of acrylic paint on broken glass, the old windows of the artist’s studio in the former factory Simala, function as affective tools. Purple for Senegal, yellow for Leiria, pink for Simala, they are a memory of former studios. Their surfaces, fractured and uneven, recall the Japanese art of kintsugi, where cracks are emphasized rather than hidden, revealing value in imperfection. Dust and residue remain clinged to the glass, repositories of past light and labor.

Part of the Get Back cycle, curated by Carolina Trigueiros, the exhibition marks a return, not just to the space where the artist first exhibited in 2012, but also to his own practice. It seems like a self-portrait in stages — works fold memory into matter, archives into the present, one walks forward by looking back.

While Nuno Sousa Vieira materializes time – documented, indexed, displaced – Dayana Lucas turns time into something elusive.

Heading downstairs, one loses perception of time and space as you walk into what feels more like a moment than a room. Dayana Lucas creates a (non-)space; dreamlike, disarming, almost tender. A dream you do not want to leave.

A luminous space, clear from within, she has removed the usual fixing points: the top of walls, the ceiling line, the horizon. References are taken out; we float.

Looping within the circular walls, time begins to spin. The three characters dance: past, present, future. Future, present, past. Present, past, future? Subtle drawings on the wall where the lines resist fixation, a hidden language I want to learn speaking. They materialize in the center: “An open and illuminated head […], fragilely supported from the outside”. Fluid-like clock hands, time as a delicate organism that seems to breathe.

Dayana Lucas engages in a subtle flow of duality. Strength supported by fragility; fragility anchored by force. Permeable walls are held up by weight. A permeable boundary between dream and reality, between inside and outside, between you and me? What seems most stable may, in fact, be most delicate.

Made out of meters of recycled paper, they are supported by heavy sand. The sand – often a measurement of time in hourglasses[3] – resists movement; instead of flowing, it pins, it anchors. Behind the lettering at the back wall appears as a kind of backside, reminding us that everyone has one, even if unseen.

Perhaps it is this quiet suspension – the hush between holding and letting go, between lightness and weight – that allows for losing oneself completely. And by that, to expand time.

Only in dreams I lose ground: illuminada perdição.[4]

Both exhibitions are on view until 10th of May 2025.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/feb/24/4

[2] An artist book with the same name will be presented on May 10th at Appleton.

[3] In conversation with Juliette Thouin.

[4] Dayana Lucas, Exhibition Text Perder o nome.