The second edition of sā Ladakh, The Future of Immersive Land Art / Immersive Land Art and the Future, a land art exhibition held at an elevation of 3600 metres above sea level, showcased over 15 installations at Disko Valley Bike Park in Leh, Ladakh, from June 1 - 10, 2024. Initiated in August 2023, sā Ladakh engages with the environment, culture and community of Ladakh. Co-Founder Raki Nikahetiya shared with STIR, “sā—meaning soil in Ladakhi language—was founded with the passion and love for landscapes, environment and communities and a focus on engaging people from all walks of life – particularly the next generation, the future custodians of the land.” The immersive public art initiative, structured around the ethos of climate optimism, brings together artists, organisations, young people and communities, from the Himalayan region and beyond. The site of the festival was left abandoned for several years. It was rejuvenated in 2018, with the removal of 22 acres of debris and the establishment of the Disko Valley Bike Park, one of the world’s highest mountain bike parks, by Urgyan Skaldan, Tenzin Jamphel and Tundup Gyatso.

It is true that we are known for a mindful approach to artmaking, but sā is young and we are not perfect. It is a continuous proof of concept—making mistakes, improving, adapting, listening, being critical and reflective of our own actions—the learning should never stop. – Raki Nikahetiya, Co-Founder, sā Ladakh

Apart from the site-specific art installations at the festival, sā Ladakh also hosted artist film screenings curated by Dharamshala International Film Festival, an artist residency, school outreach programmes and an immersive contemporary performance. It collaborated with the Austrian public arts institution Museum in Progress, to showcase a series of works by international artists such as Minerva Cuevas, Shilpa Gupta, Samson Kambalu, Agnieszka Kurant, Christian Robert-Tissot, Eva Schlegel, Grazia Toderi and Erwin Wurm. Discussing the impact of land art in the fragile ecosystem of Ladakh, Nikahetiya said, “Learning from last year’s edition, we challenged the artists this year to only use recycled, renewable, biodegradable or reusable materials which are available in Ladakh… We are looking for circularity; following the exhibition, the works will either be used by the community…as building or educational material, will be displayed elsewhere to share the concept with a wider audience or stay at Diskovalley if requested by the community.” sā Ladakh’s 2024 edition sustained a mindful approach—from considering the history of the site to designing a small-scale festival that reduces unnecessary pressure on the land and the resources.

It is overwhelming to witness visitors reaching an altitude of 3600m. We saw tears, laughter and heavy breaths during the concluding performance by Omaggio, a dance performance company in Goa with Dashugs and Art of Motion from Ladakh. – Tenzin Jamyang, Co-Founder, sā Ladakh

STIR scans through some of the immersive, didactic and conscientious installations by the participating artists at sā Ladakh.

Generational Spores by Angelina Kumar

The Netherlands-based Indian artist, founder and educator Angelina Kumar is committed to creating sustainable work at a measured pace, an aspect visible in her large-scale installation for sā Ladakh, made to slowly disintegrate in its environment. Kumar’s installation, Generational Spores, comprised 250 clay circles and 400 mycelium circles in three distinct sizes. “Mycelium, a living organism dating back 715 to 810 million years, played a crucial role in breaking open rocks, enabling life as we know it today. Each mycelium circle symbolises a spore planted into the soil, inviting contemplation on the legacy we are creating for future generations,” Kumar shared.

How does home feel by Ansh & Raghav Kumar

Multidisciplinary artist Ansh Kumar and natural builder Raghav Kumar are brothers who founded the research and design practice Tiny Farm Lab in a remote village in Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. Emulating the ethos of the studio, their showcase in Ladakh, How does home feel? utilised materials such as waste mycelium blocks sourced from a local mushroom farm, bamboo, coffee waste, dry stone and clay sourced locally. Shaped over seven days, the touch-sensitive installation, rendered so by the integration of fungi that respond to stimuli, raised questions such as: “Do we feel our own homes?...Is ephemeralism bad?” whilst also capturing the simple beauty of symbiosis.

Infinity in a Box by Ikshit Pande and Jasmeet Kaur

Infinity in a Box by inter-disciplinary textile artists Ikshit Pande and Jasmeet Kaur, who hail from Nainital and Ahmedabad respectively, was an installation made out of silk and repurposed textile waste. The installation viscerally pointed to the issues of climate change, over-tourism, the Himalayas and the panoramic landscape and the imagination it stirs. The flawless silk organza-covered bamboo structure concealed within it a heart-shaped sculpture adorned with layers of handmade flowers, strings and lace work. The former depicted the romanticised narratives around nature while the latter portrayed the heaviness that landscapes are burdened with as a result of over-tourism, deforestation, landfills and other forms of pollution.

Dreamweaver by Laurent Ziegler

Laurent Ziegler, who hails from Austria, specialises in photography, performative work and deeply visceral land art. His work for sā Ladakh, Dreamweaver, was made using local organic fabrics taken from old parachutes. This fabric affixed upon a circular structure, flowed and floated in the air, leaving behind imprints on the land. The overall installation and the ever-changing imprints left on the land depicted the ephemerality, sacredness and heaving of nature—and made a reference to land as an immeasurable vessel for memory—taking in and providing information from the very beginning of time.

Sangam by Manisha Gera Baswani

Visual artist Manisha Gera Baswani’s work encompasses painting, photography, sculpture and poetic writing. Sangam, Baswani’s installation in Ladakh, was made up of two long pieces of silk that stretched across the expanse of the Ladakhi terrain. The silk depicted the Zanskar and Indus rivers and their intersection showed the meeting of the two rivers, each with their distinct attributes. It depicted the confluence of two disparate entities, mirroring the harmonious interplay of tradition and modernity, old and new, inside and outside, contemporary and traditional, and a range of other such contrasts in the world.

Glacier’s Retreat by Stanzin Tsepel

Sculptor Stanzin Tsepel’s artwork in Ladakh, Glacier’s Retreat, comprised a series of sculptures made using scrap wood, iron rod and white lime, imbued in a light blue hue. The artwork depicted the retreats of two glaciers', namely Parkachik Glacier and Drang Drung Glacier in Tsepel’s native village Rangdum, in Kargil. Over the years, these glaciers have melted, as a direct consequence of climate change. “The once majestic glaciers, guardians of the mountains, now recede at a pace that cannot be ignored,” the artist shared. The sculptures, dotting the terrain, drew one's focus towards the implications of climate change.

Petroglyph in phey-tik by Tsering Youdol

Leh-based visual artist Tsering Youdol’s Petroglyph in phey-tik was a recreation of archaic petroglyphs of Ladakh using phey-tik, a thumb impression made with barley flour on the wall, pillars and doors of traditional Ladakhi homes. However, for this installation, the artist utilised clay and discarded white tiles to configure phey-tik. The artwork sought to honour the cultural heritage of the area and was an attempt to revive the dying tradition of phey-tik. With sā Ladakh having ended on June 10, the tiles will be reused and the clay left behind to dissolve with the land.

The North Face by Viola Bordon

Philadelphia-based artist and educator Viola Bordon’s The North Face presented a stern reminder of how the Global North exerts power on the Himalayan mountains. Bordon collected a bunch of factory overstock labels and wove them together to cover a rock in the area. "The most inane natural object contains a vibrant rage of life, and in defiance of that, I have placed a label,” she shared. The placement of the artificially produced overstock labels on the natural rock demonstrated the impact that activities in the Global North have on other regions across the globe. The labels used on the rock will now be shipped back to the artist, for reuse.

Other works presented at the art exhibition included Chennai-based textile designer Aditi Jain’s Open Weave installation which strung together anecdotal allegories in the warps and wefts of woven fabric, Urgain Zawa’s Jungwa 5, emulating the five elemental forces, Mumbai-based artists Doyel Joshi and Neil Ghose Balser’s sculptural land art performance piece In the Pink that emulates the movement of herds of goats in the Ladakhi landscape and Leh-based sculptor Kundan Gyatso’s Harmony and heritage cultivating tradition depicting and venerating traditional Ladakhi farming. Visual artist Kunzes Zangmo portrayed the ephemerality of life in geçicilik, visual and fibre artist Li Actuallee’s Totemic Shifts was emblematic of the meditative aspect that pervades their personal and professional life, Ladakhi visual artist Tsetan Angmo's Memories of kha was an experimental animated film that portrays the nostalgic recollections of snow across three generations and Childhood Memories by Ladakhi sculptor Zarina Parveen materially recalled early memories of play, joy and comfort via simple and sustainable objects and totems.

Discussing what one can expect to see NEXT for sā Ladakh, Sagardeep Singh, Co-Founder of sā Ladakh, said, “sā will become a Biennale going forward, with the next edition in 2026, but we feel our journey is just at the beginning. We see sā not only as a Biennale; instead, we see it as a platform for ongoing collaborations and connections. Ladakh will always be our centre point but for us, it is not about a specific location—it’s a transboundary approach to land art and promoting climate optimism through the arts elsewhere.”