How Sā Biennale Is Bringing Contemporary Art Into Ladakh’s Landscape: A Conversation

Tsering Motup Siddho (TM): For the past two editions, Sā was hosted as a land art festival at Disco Valley Bike Park, near Shanti Stupa. It emerged from the history of land art, artists such as Richard Long and practices of the 1960s, and thinking about how those ideas could be expanded within Ladakh.

This edition moves between Leh and Kargil, opening up the western corridor beyond Basgo. From Nimmu onwards, much of this region is referred to as the Sham Valley, with differences in dialect and cultural practices across these areas.

There is also a regenerative aspect to the program: how do you restore, give back and work sustainably? One attempt has been to minimise production, particularly bringing foreign materials into the landscape. Most artworks have been conceived to produce almost zero waste.

For Tom Muller’s project in Basgo, which uses a fog machine, we asked what could be given back in return for hosting the work. Since the monastery had not been painted for some time, we helped limewash its walls and worked on sections of the roof. We spoke to village heads, sought permission and worked through existing community structures. We could not involve everyone, but there was an effort to make the projects locally known and embedded.

TM: Vishal K Dar and I began conversations with around twenty artists. Once the artists were selected, we began thinking about their relationship to particular sites. Chemat Dorjey, for instance, is a senior sculptor capable of working at a large scale, so Basgo made sense for his work. Old Town developed differently, partly from the large mural by Fearless Collective there and a desire to create something within Leh that people could encounter directly. This developed around the Old Town walk organised by the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO).

TM: Being outdoors, the experience tests your physical endurance, creating an awareness of your body and how it reacts to the landscape. The works therefore have different degrees of accessibility. In Mulbekh, for instance, you view Stanzin Samphel’s work from a distance; going closer would mean losing some of its details. Other works allow you to come very close and interact with the space.

Basgo is partially accessible. Not everybody has to make the descent; you can view the works from the other side or upper parking area. There is a negotiation between accessibility and endurance. It is not meant to be difficult for the sake of difficulty, but to make you conscious of your body moving through the landscape. Perhaps that is why people call it a treasure hunt.

TM: A lot of these villages have their own artistic traditions. Likir, for example, is popular for pottery. There is a girl, Sonam, who grows mushrooms and has a stall there. Likewise, we wanted people to bring crafts from the villages. It’s also a treasure hunt for us to find out what people bring into the Sā Biennale. As an associate curator, I also learned a lot and reflected on my own work and practice.

TM: One aspect is funding: ideas held for a long time can expand when people around you help shape how they might work within the landscape. I realised this particularly in Mulbekh, where it is easy to miss the scale of Stanzin Samphel’s installation. From one side, something stretching almost 750 metres can appear as a simple line. From the other side of the mountain, you realise how small you are in relation to it, and the labour involved in drawing that line across precarious terrain.

Working on site changes the relationship between an idea and the landscape. Local knowledge becomes crucial in understanding what is possible at that scale. Production took a month, but we spent three or four months brainstorming, revisiting proposals and making site visits. We began in winter, so the landscape was very different from the one we eventually worked with in August.

TM: We knew the climate would affect the works. Last August, it rained continuously for five days, to the extent that mud-brick houses began to collapse. We had to consider how unpredictable the weather had become. Ultimately, nature will do what it wants. If it alters the work, perhaps that itself becomes a statement about climate change. This time, however, there has been less rain, allowing people to experience the landscape.

TM: We thought carefully about the afterlife of each artwork. Some structures will remain because materials such as stone, rock and bone do not harm the landscape. Others will disappear, be removed or return to the village.

In Basgo, soil from the site was put into moulds. Eventually, these forms will weather and the material will return to the landscape. In Likir, people may take away the pottery. Avantika’s bamboo can return to the village and be used for building houses.

In Henasku, Stanzin Tsepel’s work was installed between two cliffs where villagers had long wanted to hang prayer flags. The infrastructure will remain, so once the work comes down, the prayer flags can go up. The woollen threads can return to the village and be reused for crochet and other purposes. In that sense, the work serves both us and the village.