Between Water and Memory: Ricardo Romero’s /Fading/ and the Silent Weight of Change
Ricardo Romero’s “/Fading/” is one of those rare moments when an old idea, one long held in the artist’s sketchbooks and imagination, finally finds its place in the world.
Stretching across 15 meters of poetic absurdity and environmental reflection, the work presents a surreal yet deeply moving image: a polar bear floating beneath a railway bridge, its image gliding atop a quiet river like an apparition from another world.
View of Fading by Ricardo Romero, a polar bear sculpture adrift on river waters, captured by Migas Nezes / Roger.sk8, reflecting themes of melting ice and environmental change.
/Fading/ by Ricardo Romero
“Melting is both a phenomenon of the Earth and a mirror of ourselves.
When the ice melts, it reveals what has been hidden: the memory of time, the trace of warmth, the promise of change.
The ice gives way, and the river begins to flow swiftly again.
The water carries with it memories and forms that once seemed fixed.
Melting exposes fragilities and rhythms that we can no longer control.
In the movement of the river, we feel the urgency of a world that changes without warning us.“
The installation flows beneath an old steel bridge, its faded green framework cutting across the natural hues of autumn sets the scene.
View of Fading by Ricardo Romero, a polar bear sculpture adrift on river waters, captured by Migas Nezes / Roger.sk8, reflecting themes of melting ice and environmental change.
Above: the industrial rhythm of rails and graffitied trains, symbols of movement, progress, and modern velocity. Below: stillness, fragility, and the spectral presence of the polar bear, reflecting their gaze at us, carried forward by the water with each passing second, on the edge of climate memory.
View of Fading by Ricardo Romero, a polar bear sculpture adrift on river waters, captured by Migas Nezes / Roger.sk8, reflecting themes of melting ice and environmental change.
Despite being ephemeral, the installation feels heavy. The bear, unmoving, ghostly, and impossibly calm carries a quiet gravitas. It’s the emotional weight of environmental loss, of fading ecosystems.
We are witnesses to change that feels inevitable, yet still reversible. The polar bear becomes a totem of that threshold: not melting, not gone, but fading.
View of Fading by Ricardo Romero, a polar bear sculpture adrift on river waters, captured by Migas Nezes / Roger.sk8, reflecting themes of melting ice and environmental change.
Photography by Migas Nezes and Roger.sk8