Reflections on Art

By Pedro Ribeiro

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Ana Filipe - Breathing Space

From the moment I encountered this painting by Ana Filipe, I felt that I was not simply observing a work, but being observed by it. Rarely has an image given so much of myself back to me. That figure enclosed in a bubble, suspended between the sea and the grey city, seemed less like a character and more like a mirror, a reflection of the way I exist in the world, divided between the weight of everyday life and the vital need to find a place where I can breathe.

Water has always been that place for me. Not only because I am a Pisces, but because my relationship with the aquatic world began so early that it almost merges with the very origin of my memory. Even before I turned one year old, water was already part of me. Pool, sea, river, it did not matter. In all of them, I recognized a kind of return, as if the body remembered a refuge that exists before language and before consciousness, my mother’s womb, my first bubble. Perhaps that is why floating has always felt like more than resting, it felt like returning, for brief moments, to a primordial state of protection.

Throughout childhood and adolescence, that connection deepened. I swam, I went to the beach, I lived entire summers between sand and sea. I carry memories of rolling in the sand, of running into the water without hesitation, of playing between extremes that, as children, we did not need to explain, dry and wet, cold and warm, stillness and movement. The beach was a complete space, a world where everything seemed connected, as if the scattered grains of sand and the vast ocean were teaching me, without words, that beauty exists both in fragments and in immensity.

Later, however, a grey phase arrived. As I transitioned into adulthood, I began to feel that I was no longer truly living, but merely functioning. My studies became my absolute focus, and screens, required by my field, began to dominate my days. Work and distraction coexisted in the same place, and everything became monotonous, predictable, and exhausting. It was that same feeling that I recognized in the background of the painting, those anonymous figures, repeated, hurried, trapped in the mechanical choreography of their obligations. A world in motion, yet without true presence. It was then that the opportunity to work as a lifeguard appeared. And with it, something in me awakened. In the summer of 2023, I felt that I had unearthed the child that had long been submerged within me. The sea was no longer just memory or nostalgia, it became choice, healing, and reunion. I felt the sand beneath my feet again, not as someone simply escaping, but as someone returning to themselves. There, I created a new bubble, not one of origin, but one of reconstruction.

That is what makes this my favorite work from the Creating and Holding Space exhibit. The bubble in the painting does not seem to me to be merely an act of escape, but an act of survival. It is not a rejection of the world, but the invention of an inner space capable of withstanding it. And the yellow of the figure’s clothing, so close to my lifeguard uniform, intensified that identification even more. There are works that make us reflect. But the rare ones are those that reflect parts of ourselves, with beauty and precision, that we once believed were scattered.