The Wheel of Hours

Time is not a line. It is a circle that turns in the dark, indifferent to the weight of those it carries. We sit in our small, glass-walled compartments, suspended above the black water, waiting for the rotation to bring us back to the ground. There is a strange comfort in this repetition. To be lifted, to be held in the air, and to be returned exactly where we began. We think we are moving forward, but we are only tracing the same path, over and over, while the city below burns with a cold, electric light. The silence at the top of the arc is the only thing that is real. It is a place where the noise of the streets cannot reach, where the breath catches in the chest, and the distance between the earth and the stars feels like a thin, fragile membrane. What happens when the wheel stops turning? Does the night hold us, or does it simply wait for us to vanish?

Ana Sylvia Encinas has captured this stillness in her work titled London Eye at Night. She finds a quiet rhythm in the turning of the city. Does the light feel like a promise to you, or a warning?