Museu da Água

Rua do Alviela 12, 1700-012 Lisboa

Inauguration → 18 . 09 . 2025 → 06:00 pm

19 . 09 . 2025 → 02 . 11 . 2025

tuesday - sunday → 10:00 am – 06:00 pm

Artist

João Mariano

(…) During the autumn of 2023, the Bravura Dam (Lagos – Algarve) reached its lowest point in many years. The landscape, although of sublime beauty, is desolate and above all, scary!

This project began at the end of 2021, and the photographs started at around January 2022. The project has, by way of several trips, continued into the interior of the reservoir up to late 2024. Throughout the fieldwork, it was possible to see different regressions in the water level and the emergence of elements long hidden by the waters. An abnormally low volume of water levels means you can not only walk across areas that have long been covered in water, but you can also see the old farm buildings again and admire the scenery that we had not seen for a long time.

We are living in a time when climate change and the unwise use of natural resources are on the agenda. This project is a wake- -up call, a pertinent warning cry which, on a very personal register, conveys a necessary and impactful general alert.

This is a project that started from a local base to reflect on global warming and climate change. It is an in-depth project whose approach, albeit very subjective, seeks to create a striking and emotional visual narrative as an artistic object and simultaneously a document of an era.

My wish is that this invisible landscape now made visible becomes permanently invisible and that everyone makes an effective and conscious contribution so that drougths are the exception and not the rule.