The Weight of Time

Curated by Annette Fleur de Lis

Time is the most exquisite riddle I’ve ever met.

Not a force. Not a number. Not a line.

But a mirror. A test. A sculptor of the self.

Lately, I find myself sorting the Augean stables of my ambitions.

And I begin to see:

they were never urgent.

Never sacred.

Only inherited illusions dressed as “to-do’s.”

Since childhood, I was destined to fight.

Not in war — but in silence.

The kind of silence where every move is made despite,

not because of the world I was born into.

My life wasn’t tragic.

It was average.

And average is the one thing I’ve always feared.

My obsession has never been success.

It’s been difference.

To stand apart. To matter.

To become one of the chosen few —

the 1%, the aesthetic elite, the untouchably significant.

But I see now:

even that dream… was average.

Just shinier.

I analyze everything. Always have.

Patterns, motives, gestures, glances, futures, failures.

It felt like power —

to know.

To understand before being surprised.

To control reality through meaning.

But the truth is:

analysis without embodiment is a labyrinth with no exit.

I’ve become more intelligent, more complex — yes.

But not more free.

Nothing comes easy to me.

Goals arrive through friction.

Success, when it visits, comes half-heartedly — like a guest who won’t stay for tea.

And this dream of mine — of being a model —

may not even be mine.

How strange.

To devote years to something

that now feels like a ghost I’ve been trying to wear.

A costume stitched by capitalism, beauty standards, and childhood hunger.

But still…

since I was little, I saw myself on stage.

Not necessarily to be seen —

but to become form. To become image. To become myth.

And maybe that’s the split:

Between the desire for visibility

and the longing for meaning.

So I ask:

What if my true gift is not in how I pose — but in how I see?

What if my modeling was never about clothes —

but about consciousness dressed in skin?

I was not born to be average.

But maybe not because I’m “better.”

Maybe because I was meant to feel everything,

burn through everything,

and rebuild from the ashes of false ambition.

Now I want to serve beauty that changes people.

To design silence, space, systems, emotions.

To leave behind not outfits — but architecture.

My path is not lucky.

But it is mine.

And that — finally — is enough.

— Annette Fleur de Lis