Conversation: Encounters, Stories and Ways of Seeing

Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts invites you to Encounters, Stories and Ways of Seeing, with Inês Gonsalves and Catarina Portas in conversation with Leandré D’Souza.

What does it mean to travel to a place, encounter its people, and learn to see it beyond the familiar? Through photography and writing, Gonsalves and Portas explore their encounters with India and Goa, reflecting on the people, cultures and histories that shaped their experiences. Looking beyond conventional representations of Goa, their work considers how we come to know a place and how its histories and everyday lives influence our understanding of it.

Presented as part of the ongoing exhibition Still / Goa: A Place in its People, this conversation revisits the questions that shaped their shared work and creative partnership. Through an exchange of ideas and experiences, they reflect on the relationship between people, memory and history, and how encounters with another place can transform the way we see the world and understand the place we call home.

At its heart, the conversation celebrates the friendship and shared curiosity of Gonsalves and Portas, exploring how encounters become stories and how collaborative journeys continue to shape our ways of seeing long