The Ebro Delta is suffocating. Today, 98% of the sediment that ensures its survival are held back in the Mequinensa and Riba-roja reservoirs, causing an unprecedented period of retreat and erosion in the delta. Over the last 60 years more than one hundred dams have altered the natural course of the Ebro River and its tributaries, which in turn has endangered the survival of this ecosystem that could disappear within 80 years. This problem is not exclusive to the Ebro Delta; it affects all the wetlands on the planet as 90% of these ecosystems have been damaged or lost due to poor water management.

Furthermore, the pressure of climate change is accelerating this process, with rising sea levels due to the melting of the polar ice caps and increasingly frequent and severe adverse climate phenomena.

The Ebro Delta is not only facing a climate, water, and energy crisis, but also a cultural one. This crisis boils down to an archaic form of interacting with nature based on an extractivist model in which, as the anthropologist Bruno Latour warned, «the most important thing is to use the resources for development». This outdated perspective is the starting point for the project entitled “El paisatge invisible” (The Invisible Landscape).

In 2021, Wayra Ficapal started documenting the fragile ecosystem of the Ebro Delta. First, she did so by taking photos with an analogue camera: a camera that made it possible to establish a slower paced, conscious, and attentive relationship with the environment. Then, she intervened in the photographs with seawater from the Mediterranean, the very same water that is invading and eroding the largest wetland in Catalonia.

Intervening in the photographs enables the artist to establish a collaborative dialogue with the landscape that opens up a non-human narrative and invites us to change our way of understanding and interacting with the environment. Layer by layer, the photos start deteriorating while the landscape becomes invisible. What is the resulting landscape?

Historically, landscape photography has perpetuated an idealised vision inherited from painting and cinema, disconnected from its conflicts and lacking any sort of critical perspective. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, this representation was perhaps useful, however, faced with the climate crisis, this visual language continues to impact our bonds with the environment in an anachronistic manner. The story must be changed to enrich this relationship with the landscape.