50th Anniversary of Nova University Lisbon
Untitled – Bodies of Water
As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations and the launch of the Nova Cultura Program, NOVA University invited sculptor Maria Ana Vasco Costa to perform an intervention on the Campolide Campus as part of the University’s strategic sustainability project. The initiative, supported by Ar.Co – Center for Art and Visual Communication, also celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023, brings together the areas of Culture and Sustainability with a work integrated into the new design of the Campus’ green spaces, featuring more pollinating gardens, greater biodiversity, and greater openness to the city and surrounding community. Maria Ana Vasco Costa’s piece, forming a “water plane” in glazed ceramic that connects the lawn and the new pollinator garden, introduces a reflection on water into the Campus space, in dialogue with the Universidade Nova Rectorate building and the shadow it casts over the garden. This reflection evokes the contrasts between absence and permanence, between crystallization and movement, thus offering a potential artistic and figurative counterpoint to the University’s reflection on the importance of water and its progressive and alarming scarcity.
Untitled – Bodies of Water
The work developed by Maria Ana Vasco Costa since 2014 seeks to establish connections between the fragment and the ceramic material, as a way of gathering memories of her relationship with nature. Her sculptures, executed in glazed ceramic, are a kind of visual, poetic, and proto-scientific essay, of the landscape transformed into ceramics and drawing, reminiscent of geological formations, rock fragments, or chunks of ice through work on color, depth, temperature, variation, and sound. The work presented here articulates the memory of the islands as a metamorphic landscape – Maria Ana Vasco Costa’s Azorean roots and Iceland’s volcanic landscapes are associated with the rock formations of the Odemira area or with images of glaciers. A large rectangle of glazed blue appears on the lawn in front of the Rectory as a “water surface” and demarcates the garden space. The reflection that characterizes the glaze and the piece’s relationship with the rest of the landscaped space – as it coexists with the vegetation – make evident the changes in the presence of matter throughout the different phases of the day, months, and seasons. The elements that comprise the work – the raw basalt rock, the large enameled rectangle – function as a garden within the garden. In an attempt to “crystallize” the immateriality of aquatic environments and forests, the artist created a rectangle composed of several other rectangles, hand-glazed in a deep blue. The glaze interacts with light, creating an environment of impermanence, like a wind-blown water surface that reflects the surrounding vegetation.
Water Scarcity and Climate Change
Although 70% of our planet is covered in water, freshwater—the water we drink, bathe in, and irrigate our farmland—is incredibly rare. Only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater, and two-thirds of it is held in frozen glaciers or otherwise unavailable for our use. About two billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water today (SDG Report, 2022), and about half of the world’s population faces severe water scarcity during part of the year (IPCC, 2022). These numbers are expected to increase, exacerbated by climate change and population growth (WMO, 2022). At the current rate, 1.6 billion people will still lack access to safe drinking water at home by 2030, the deadline for Sustainable Development Goal 6 – Ensure availability and sustainable management of drinking water and sanitation for all. The crisis is worst in low-income countries; an estimated 70% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa lacks safe drinking water services. Water scarcity has a greater impact on women and children because they are often responsible for collecting it. When water is far away, it takes longer to collect it, which often means less time in school, with a greater impact on girls.
Climate change is shifting precipitation patterns worldwide, causing shortages and droughts in some areas and floods in others. Many of the water systems that maintain thriving ecosystems and feed a growing human population are under pressure. Agriculture consumes more water than any other activity and wastes much of it due to serious inefficiencies. The Iberian Peninsula has always faced water scarcity, but climate change has exacerbated drought patterns, projecting serious periods of water scarcity into the future.
