mar de algas

Mar de Algas engages with the rapid spread of Ruguloptery okamurae, an algae reshaping the coastal ecosystems of Tarifa. Often framed as a destructive presence, the algae is approached here instead as a witness and messenger of ecological imbalance. Its proliferation is closely tied to human activity. It is thought to have been introduced through global shipping and unsustainable fishing practices thus revealing the consequences of environmental disruption
and shifting marine conditions.
The project draws conceptually from the imagined voice of the algae itself. Rather than positioning it solely as a threat, the work considers how such narratives can displace responsibility, projecting blame outward while obscuring the human actions that enable these transformations. In this sense, the algae becomes a kind of narrator, an unfamiliar presence that reflects back the
conditions that allowed it to thrive. Images produced using pigment derived from the algae itself remain unstable, gradually fading with exposure to light. Their slow disappearance mirrors the fragile and changing state of the marine environment from which the material originates. The work does not attempt to preserve or fix these images, but
instead allows them to shift, weaken, and eventually dissolve. Within this process, material and subject become inseparable. The algae is not only represented but actively participates in the making and unmaking of the image, carrying within it the traces of an ecosystem in transformation. What
remains are impressions that resist permanence. Mar de Algas reflects on this theme of impermanence, ecological vulnerability, and the uncertain boundaries between cause and effect. It invites a reconsideration of how we position ourselves in relation to environmental
change, not as distant observers, but as participants within its unfolding.