Adriana Duarte Costa

Salt moving through textiles and copper - oxidizing, corroding, crystallizing, and hardening these structures, whilst simultaneously creating new colours and textures through their interactions.

Salt moving through textiles and copper - oxidizing, corroding, crystallizing, and hardening these structures, whilst simultaneously creating new colours and textures through their interactions.

A series of Speculative Existences is an ongoing collection of coloured pencil drawings, quiet studies of imagined life. These beings emerge through the layering of natural elements. Rooted in a practice of observation, care, and play, these drawings extend my ongoing exploration into entanglement and interconnection. A space where life is not static, but in continual negotiation, between species, materials, and stories.

At first glance, the work may appear still, but over time, it reveals its life. Drawings made with natural pigments slowly fade and shift as they interact with air, moisture, and light, as they respond to their environment. The drawn creatures are hybrid, imagined organisms. They emerged through a process of observing behaviours and forms found in nature. They represent speculative beings that speak to ideas of interconnectedness and mutual influence between species, materials, and systems. Alongside these drawings are living sculptures, made from organic materials and planted with growing organisms. As they are watered, the excess water seeps into the steel-etched drawings beneath them, and the water which slowly rusts and gains colour drops onto the textile elements on the floor of the installation, activating seeds, changing colour, and subtly altering their composition over time. This interaction creates an ongoing dialogue between living and drawn forms, between water, colour, growth and eventual decay. Visitors who could return during different points of the exhibition would encounter different moments in the work’s life cycle.

At first glance, the work may appear still, but over time, it reveals its life. Drawings made with natural pigments slowly fade and shift as they interact with air, moisture, and light, as they respond to their environment. The drawn creatures are hybrid, imagined organisms. They emerged through a process of observing behaviours and forms found in nature. They represent speculative beings that speak to ideas of interconnectedness and mutual influence between species, materials, and systems. Alongside these drawings are living sculptures, made from organic materials and planted with growing organisms. As they are watered, the excess water seeps into the steel-etched drawings beneath them, and the water which slowly rusts and gains colour drops onto the textile elements on the floor of the installation, activating seeds, changing colour, and subtly altering their composition over time. This interaction creates an ongoing dialogue between living and drawn forms, between water, colour, growth and eventual decay. Visitors who could return during different points of the exhibition would encounter different moments in the work’s life cycle.

Detail of Alchemical Entanglements

Detail of Alchemical Entanglements

Detail of Alchemical Entanglements

Detail of Alchemical Entanglements

Detail of Alchemical Entanglements

Detail of Alchemical Entanglements - the beginning of the dying stages of the installation's lifecycle.

A series of Speculative Existences is an ongoing collection of coloured pencil drawings, quiet studies of imagined life. These beings emerge through the layering of natural elements. Rooted in a practice of observation, care, and play, these drawings extend my ongoing exploration into entanglement and interconnection. A space where life is not static, but in continual negotiation, between species, materials, and stories.

A series of Speculative Existences is an ongoing collection of coloured pencil drawings, quiet studies of imagined life. These beings emerge through the layering of natural elements. Rooted in a practice of observation, care, and play, these drawings extend my ongoing exploration into entanglement and interconnection. A space where life is not static, but in continual negotiation, between species, materials, and stories.

A space where life is not static, but in continual negotiation, between species, materials, and stories.

Soil to Soul was created for Weaving Bodies, an exhibition curated by Eliza Coulson at The Hidden Gardens in Glasgow - a green refuge nestled behind the reclaimed tram shed, Tramway. The exhibition wove together sculpture, sound, moving image, and text, exploring belonging, queer ecology, and the tender entanglements between bodies, land, and more-than-human kin. In response, I created two living sculptures and a print, works that speak to the playful, relational narratives of nature. Grown slowly in the studio and exhibition space, these living forms require care: watering, watching, responding. Their survival is uncertain, echoing the delicate balance every living being must navigate. This attentive process becomes part of the piece itself, a quiet choreography of reciprocity. Rooted in sensory and poetic approaches, Soil to Soul invites reflection on interdependence: the ways we are sustained not alone, but in relation.

Soil to Soul was created for Weaving Bodies, an exhibition curated by Eliza Coulson at The Hidden Gardens in Glasgow - a green refuge nestled behind the reclaimed tram shed, Tramway. The exhibition wove together sculpture, sound, moving image, and text, exploring belonging, queer ecology, and the tender entanglements between bodies, land, and more-than-human kin. In response, I created two living sculptures and a print, works that speak to the playful, relational narratives of nature. Grown slowly in the studio and exhibition space, these living forms require care: watering, watching, responding. Their survival is uncertain, echoing the delicate balance every living being must navigate. This attentive process becomes part of the piece itself, a quiet choreography of reciprocity. Rooted in sensory and poetic approaches, Soil to Soul invites reflection on interdependence: the ways we are sustained not alone, but in relation.

Soil to Soul was created for Weaving Bodies, an exhibition curated by Eliza Coulson at The Hidden Gardens in Glasgow - a green refuge nestled behind the reclaimed tram shed, Tramway. The exhibition wove together sculpture, sound, moving image, and text, exploring belonging, queer ecology, and the tender entanglements between bodies, land, and more-than-human kin. In response, I created two living sculptures and a print, works that speak to the playful, relational narratives of nature. Grown slowly in the studio and exhibition space, these living forms require care: watering, watching, responding. Their survival is uncertain, echoing the delicate balance every living being must navigate. This attentive process becomes part of the piece itself, a quiet choreography of reciprocity. Rooted in sensory and poetic approaches, Soil to Soul invites reflection on interdependence: the ways we are sustained not alone, but in relation.

Soil to Soul was created for Weaving Bodies, an exhibition curated by Eliza Coulson at The Hidden Gardens in Glasgow - a green refuge nestled behind the reclaimed tram shed, Tramway. The exhibition wove together sculpture, sound, moving image, and text, exploring belonging, queer ecology, and the tender entanglements between bodies, land, and more-than-human kin. In response, I created two living sculptures and a print, works that speak to the playful, relational narratives of nature. Grown slowly in the studio and exhibition space, these living forms require care: watering, watching, responding. Their survival is uncertain, echoing the delicate balance every living being must navigate. This attentive process becomes part of the piece itself, a quiet choreography of reciprocity. Rooted in sensory and poetic approaches, Soil to Soul invites reflection on interdependence: the ways we are sustained not alone, but in relation.

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness. This piece was also part of the collective exhibition

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness.

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness.

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness.

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness.

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness.

bilmp, toot, jingle, fizz! Is a composition, playfully alive, photosynthesizing and breathing - the textile sculpture, tenderly inhabited by sprouting organisms and lichen. It spins softly at each blow of a breeze, tracing invisible rhythms in the space she inhabits. The title is aimed at playfully echoing the sound of soft onomatopoeias, evoking a world beyond the visible. The interplay between the inhabited textile and still nature sanding beside it, and the latex-embossed print that continues to unfold the playful dialogue between motion and pause, aliveness and stillness.

natureza, morta? is a small installation developed from one of my still life studies. The title plays on the Portuguese term for “still life,” which literally translates to “dead nature.” By including living moss and natural objects that still carry presence (or spirit...) such stones, shells, sticks, I question how stillness, slowness or decay could ever be designated as lifelessness. I aim to shift natureza morta from a fixed artistic category to a quiet provocation: How can it be dead nature? Can stillness hold vitality, memory, and quiet forms of life? In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s chapter "Grammar of Animacy", from the book Braiding Sweetgrass, this installation reflects on the idea that language shapes our perception of the world’s vitality. Kimmerer explains how Indigenous languages assign animate qualities to elements of nature that in the west are often consider inert. In the Potawatomi language a word for 'hill' is a verb, a being. As Merlin Sheldrake reflects in his book Entangled Life: a hill is always in the process of being a hill, it is always "hilling". natureza, morta? invites a reexamination of our relationship with the natural world, urging the recognition of the subtle animate presence that persists even in stillness.

Our bodies remember, not just through thought, but also through the quiet insistence of scent, texture, and presence. In Breeze of a Wandering Landscape, I explore the deep, link between the senses and spatial memory. Rooted in my practice and study of textile craft, this installation is shaped primarily through paper and scent—ephemeral materials chosen for their fragility and their ability to hold a trace. Each woven piece that inhabits this space is built with yarn that I wove using paper. This yarn in gently infused with scent, carrying an invisible presence that travels through the air and into the body. As visitors move through the space, their bodies become part of the work. The installation does not stand still; it is stirred by the breeze of motion, by breath, by attention. Scents rise subtly from the woven forms, wrapping around the senses, inviting pause. This becomes a bodily encounter, an atmosphere to be inhabited. Through this quiet immersion, I hope to offer a gentle proposition: that by slowing down and tuning in to the soft signals of our surroundings, we might better understand how our environments imprint upon us.

Our bodies remember, not just through thought, but also through the quiet insistence of scent, texture, and presence. In Breeze of a Wandering Landscape, I explore the deep, link between the senses and spatial memory. Rooted in my practice and study of textile craft, this installation is shaped primarily through paper and scent—ephemeral materials chosen for their fragility and their ability to hold a trace. Each woven piece that inhabits this space is built with yarn that I wove using paper. This yarn in gently infused with scent, carrying an invisible presence that travels through the air and into the body. As visitors move through the space, their bodies become part of the work. The installation does not stand still; it is stirred by the breeze of motion, by breath, by attention. Scents rise subtly from the woven forms, wrapping around the senses, inviting pause. This becomes a bodily encounter, an atmosphere to be inhabited. Through this quiet immersion, I hope to offer a gentle proposition: that by slowing down and tuning in to the soft signals of our surroundings, we might better understand how our environments imprint upon us.

Our bodies remember, not just through thought, but also through the quiet insistence of scent, texture, and presence. In Breeze of a Wandering Landscape, I explore the deep, link between the senses and spatial memory. Rooted in my practice and study of textile craft, this installation is shaped primarily through paper and scent—ephemeral materials chosen for their fragility and their ability to hold a trace. Each woven piece that inhabits this space is built with yarn that I wove using paper. This yarn in gently infused with scent, carrying an invisible presence that travels through the air and into the body. As visitors move through the space, their bodies become part of the work. The installation does not stand still; it is stirred by the breeze of motion, by breath, by attention. Scents rise subtly from the woven forms, wrapping around the senses, inviting pause. This becomes a bodily encounter, an atmosphere to be inhabited. Through this quiet immersion, I hope to offer a gentle proposition: that by slowing down and tuning in to the soft signals of our surroundings, we might better understand how our environments imprint upon us.

Our bodies remember, not just through thought, but also through the quiet insistence of scent, texture, and presence. In Breeze of a Wandering Landscape, I explore the deep, link between the senses and spatial memory. Rooted in my practice and study of textile craft, this installation is shaped primarily through paper and scent—ephemeral materials chosen for their fragility and their ability to hold a trace. Each woven piece that inhabits this space is built with yarn that I wove using paper. This yarn in gently infused with scent, carrying an invisible presence that travels through the air and into the body. As visitors move through the space, their bodies become part of the work. The installation does not stand still; it is stirred by the breeze of motion, by breath, by attention. Scents rise subtly from the woven forms, wrapping around the senses, inviting pause. This becomes a bodily encounter, an atmosphere to be inhabited. Through this quiet immersion, I hope to offer a gentle proposition: that by slowing down and tuning in to the soft signals of our surroundings, we might better understand how our environments imprint upon us.

Our bodies remember, not just through thought, but also through the quiet insistence of scent, texture, and presence. In Breeze of a Wandering Landscape, I explore the deep, link between the senses and spatial memory. Rooted in my practice and study of textile craft, this installation is shaped primarily through paper and scent—ephemeral materials chosen for their fragility and their ability to hold a trace. Each woven piece that inhabits this space is built with yarn that I wove using paper. This yarn in gently infused with scent, carrying an invisible presence that travels through the air and into the body. As visitors move through the space, their bodies become part of the work. The installation does not stand still; it is stirred by the breeze of motion, by breath, by attention. Scents rise subtly from the woven forms, wrapping around the senses, inviting pause. This becomes a bodily encounter, an atmosphere to be inhabited. Through this quiet immersion, I hope to offer a gentle proposition: that by slowing down and tuning in to the soft signals of our surroundings, we might better understand how our environments imprint upon us.

Our bodies remember, not just through thought, but also through the quiet insistence of scent, texture, and presence. In Breeze of a Wandering Landscape, I explore the deep, link between the senses and spatial memory. Rooted in my practice and study of textile craft, this installation is shaped primarily through paper and scent—ephemeral materials chosen for their fragility and their ability to hold a trace. Each woven piece that inhabits this space is built with yarn that I wove using paper. This yarn in gently infused with scent, carrying an invisible presence that travels through the air and into the body. As visitors move through the space, their bodies become part of the work. The installation does not stand still; it is stirred by the breeze of motion, by breath, by attention. Scents rise subtly from the woven forms, wrapping around the senses, inviting pause. This becomes a bodily encounter, an atmosphere to be inhabited. Through this quiet immersion, I hope to offer a gentle proposition: that by slowing down and tuning in to the soft signals of our surroundings, we might better understand how our environments imprint upon us.