Unda was created in response to the question posed by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden: What unites humanity and nature? Invited to respond through sculpture, I found myself returning to the most essential and universal element of life — water.

 

Without water, there is no life. It is the beginning and continuation of every ecosystem, every organism, every cycle of existence. Without it there is only death: no flora, no fauna, no humanity. Water moves through the planet in a seamless full circle, endlessly transforming and returning to itself, and it is this continuous cycle that I see as the fundamental connection between humans and the natural world.

 

The title Unda, translating from Latin as “wave” or “water,” reflects this idea directly. The sculpture becomes both a depiction of water itself and a symbolic monument to it — an object that attempts to honour something so essential that it is often overlooked. At the same time, the work functions as a machine: a process of cleaning, filtering, and paying respect to the very substance that sustains all life. In this sense, Unda exists somewhere between sculpture, ritual object, and ecological system.

 

The ecological considerations behind the work were equally important to its meaning. As requested by the gallery, the production process had to remain environmentally conscious, but this requirement also aligned naturally with my own approach to the piece. Every stage of the sculpture’s creation emphasized recycling, reuse, and the transformation of discarded materials into something purposeful. All plastic incorporated into the work had been rescued from landfill or potential water pollution streams — materials considered useless and non-recyclable, repurposed into an object centred around preservation and care.

 

Unda was first exhibited on the edge of a natural pond, positioned on an easel constructed from untreated found wood still carrying traces of moss and organic growth. Installed directly within the landscape that inspired it, the sculpture became part of the environment it sought to protect — existing not as an object separated from nature, but as an extension of it.