Light Tension

Light Tension is a sculptural textile installation suspended from a baroque ceiling rose, first exhibited at Palácio Gomes Freire during Lisbon by Design. It explores the paradoxical relationship between gravity and illumination, softness and structure. Composed of hand-manipulated textile forms and embedded lighting, the work appears both weightless and grounded, simultaneously emerging and dissolving into the space it inhabits. The piece evokes the organic — its surface recalling skin, bark, or cloud — while its internal glow suggests a living presence, a pulse. Light becomes more than a visual phenomenon; it is rendered tactile, a material in itself. The installation softens the architectural environment, allowing nature to infiltrate the domestic, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, built and grown. At its core, Light Tension is a meditation on the invisible forces that shape and hold us: tension not as rupture or conflict, but as connection. It reflects on the delicate balance that allows structures, bodies, and ecosystems to remain in place, not despite tension, but through it. Tension becomes a language of care, a dynamic equilibrium supporting transformation and coexistence. The work resists static interpretation. It hovers in a state of becoming, caught in quiet resilience. This suspension invites viewers into a contemplative space, where presence is felt more than asserted. It gestures toward something both ancient and intimate — a felt sense of what it means to be held together in flux. Light Tension extends textile thinking beyond surface and pattern, treating material, space, and energy as interdependent. It is a poetic response to contemporary urgencies: a call to attend to the fragile interconnections that sustain us.