With The Incised Shadow, the Fundación ENAIRE presents the most recent and one of the most ambitious projects by Javier Vallhonrat, winner of the 1st Fundación ENAIRE Trajectory Award. This exhibition is the result of over 10 years of fieldwork at the Maladeta Glacier in the Pyrenees. During this time, the artist has explored and spent time at the glacier that is now in a delicate state of conservation.

Along with his photography equipment and his high altitude tent, which serves as both a shelter and a camera obscura, Vallhonrat has stayed on site year after year to document this badly harmed glacier “animal”. He respects its vulnerability and portrays it from its most immediate proximity to distant views, flying over it in a light aircraft.

The Incised Shadow underlines the importance of working slowly and the physical experience, as a way of developing an affective and symbolic relationship to the Maladeta Glacier that is portrayed with love and respect in the hopes of treasuring a possible future for it.

Moreover, with this artistic exposition we face the reality and the problem, more evident each day, of the progressive disappearance of the glacier strongholds, singular places in the world, because of the gradual and continuous global warming.

The Fundación ENAIRE is a cultural institution that manages the ENAIRE Collection of Contemporary Art, a public collection with nearly 1,200 artworks in diverse media (painting, sculpture, photography, multimedia art, among other techniques). ENAIRE is an entity of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport that is responsible for air navigation in Spain..