A spoonful of salt and a spoonful of sugar investigates the main stressors affecting the waters surrounding Salvador and Ubatuba, alongside initiating a material research focused on substances with adsorptive capacities. The project aims to co-create ecosystem-sculptures: underwater and water-surface structures that function as living marine gardens. Composed of macroalgae and adsorbent materials, these sculptures will be capable of capturing pollutants such as CO₂, glyphosate, and microplastics, retaining them on their surfaces.

Drawing from traditional artisanal fishing knowledge — such as encircling and bottom-set nets — these sculptures are born from community meetings and propose a new form of “fishing”: the collection of waste and contaminants from saltwater. They operate as symbolic and ecological filters, combining ancestral practices with bioremediation technologies to create spaces of shelter and transformation.

«Built in co-authorship with other agents, my works undergo metamorphoses and tell other stories of being in the world, shaped by instability and negotiation in adaptive processes. I seek to activate gestures of re-enchantment, generating understanding, and mobilizing emotions and imaginaries that can spark transformation. Understanding, participating in, and embodying these vegetal, human, aquatic, and mineral resistance technologies is the foundation of my proposals for infiltrating landscapes and imagining alternative, emancipated futures».

Licida Vidal is a visual artist living and working in Ubatuba, São Paulo, Brazil, graduated in Social Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP). Through performance, photography, video, and installations, her work explores questions of gender and nature within the context of climate emergencies. Her practice weaves together subaltern knowledge, intimate experiences, and academic research in a search for strategies of habitability and the restoration of autonomy to bodies and territories.