Inspiration Source
Global temperature rises to exceed 1.5 Celsius 'within a few years', UNEP says
This article, firmly in the **environment** category, details a warning from the **UN Environment Programme (UNEP)** that global temperature increases are on track to **exceed the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels within a few years**.[3] Drawing on recent climate data and assessments, UNE... Full context
This article, firmly in the **environment** category, details a warning from the **UN Environment Programme (UNEP)** that global temperature increases are on track to **exceed the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels within a few years**.[3] Drawing on recent climate data and assessments, UNEP indicates that current national pledges and policies are insufficient to keep warming within the safer limits envisioned by the Paris Agreement, even if fully implemented.[3] The report explains that crossing 1.5°C substantially raises the likelihood of more frequent and intense heatwaves, storms, and droughts, with particular dangers for low-lying coastal cities vulnerable to sea-level rise and storm surges.[3] Ecosystems, including glaciers and polar regions, are projected to face accelerated melting and disruption, while biodiversity hotspots may experience species loss and habitat degradation.[3] The article notes that the world recently saw one of its hottest months on record, reinforcing the urgency of UNEP’s warning.[12] Reuters contextualises the announcement within ongoing international climate diplomacy, including upcoming COP negotiations, where governments are expected to revisit and strengthen their national climate commitments.[12][3] UNEP calls for rapid reductions in fossil fuel use, large-scale expansion of renewable energy, and significant investments in adaptation measures to protect vulnerable communities.[3] The piece underscores that the window to avoid the most severe climate outcomes is narrowing, and that decisions made in the near term will shape environmental and societal conditions for decades.[3][12]
Threshold: Sutures of the 1.5°C Coast
Threshold: Sutures of the 1.5°C Coast stages a moment of warning and repair. Carved from a single reclaimed limestone panel, the work responds to the UNEP projection that global warming may surpass 1.5°C within years. The half-submerged figures—situated between shore and city—are modeled from performative sittings and repeated, varied motifs; their faces bear rasped skin and intentional divergences so that each registers kinship and difference. Visible metal pins and sewn linen strips interrupt the stone’s fractures as deliberate, legible repairs: gestures of adaptation that refuse to disguise damage.
The piece is both a map and a prayer. Three incised cartographic insets mark rising temperature contours and recent dates; palette choices—vegetable greens from the terrace garden, iron-oxides of eroding cliffs, salt-whites of storm surge—anchor global data in local materiality. In the language of suturing and patching, the work asks what it means to live with fewer margins: how communities stitch themselves together, how policy decisions made now will alter coastlines and bodies for decades. Threshold insists on the visible hand of care—repair as testimony—and calls viewers into the ethical negotiation between collective survival and radical systemic change.
About the Artist
Marina Costa Ribeiro
Marina Costa Ribeiro (born 1992-09-03) is a 33-year-old Brazilian sculptor and mixed-media artist working primarily with limestone reliefs and representational panels that explore resilience and survi...
View Full Profile →Critic Reviews
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Dr. Helena Voss
Art historian specializing in formal analysis, trained at the Courtauld Institute. Focuses on visual structure over narrative.
Where the work is most successful is in its refusal to smooth ethical difficulty into aesthetic consolation. Suturing is presented as care, and as compromise, a useful ambiguity given the UNEP context that inspired the piece. My reservation is formal, not moral, it is that the literal language of pins and charts occasionally risks didacticism against the metaphoric subtlety of the carved faces. Even so, Marina Costa Ribeiro achieves a rare balance: an artwork that is formally rigorous, materially eloquent and politically pressed without losing the quiet authority of making. Rating, four stars.
Composition and spatial layering Materiality and surface technique Suturing as motif and repair Palette anchored in local materials Serial variation of figures Integration of cartographic dataSep 14, 2026