Report: sā Ladakh Festival, Asia’s highest land art exhibition

Imagine this: You’re cruising down a dirt track on your mountain bike, the wind whipping your face, the majestic Himalayas towering in the distance, and suddenly, you stumble upon a cluster of colourful installations. Welcome to sā Ladakh, Asia’s highest land art exhibition, which celebrated the confluence of creativity, community, and environmental consciousness at a breath taking 3,600 metres above sea. The festival, whose name is rooted in the Ladakhi word for soil, sā, was born from a passion for the landscape, environment, and local communities. The 10-day event curated by Tenzing Jamyang and held in early June (1-10 June) at Leh’s Disko Valley Bike Park included over 15 site-specific artworks made from recycled and renewable materials.

One of these, Petroglyph in Phey-Tik by Leh-based visual artist Tsering Youdol recreated Ladakh’s ancient rock art with used clay and discarded white tiles.

Generational Spores, an installation by Angelina Kumar, an artist and educator based in the Netherlands, incorporated clay and mycelium circles in different sizes. Like clay, mycelium, the root-like structure of a fungus that consists of a mass of branching and thread-like hyphae, slowly disintegrates into the environment.

How Does Home Feel? by Ansh and Raghav Kumar, the multidisciplinary artist sibling duo, who founded Tiny Farm Lab in Rishikesh, consisted of locally sourced materials like waste mycelium blocks and bamboo. A touch-sensitive installation, it explored the connection to home, and the impermanence of life.

Delhi-based visual artist Manisha Gera Baswani’s Sangam had two long pieces of silk depicting the Zanskar and Indus rivers stretching across the arid expanse. Their intersection symbolised the confluence of the two rivers at Sangam Point in Ladakh, a favourite stop on most travellers’ itineraries.

If textile artists Ikshit Pande and Jasmeet Kaur addressed climate change and over-tourism in the Himalayas through Infinity in a Box, an installation made from silk and repurposed textile waste, Austrian artist Laurent Ziegler’s Dreamweaver used old parachutes to create a flowing, ephemeral land art installation.

Stanzin Tsepel’s Glacier’s Retreat featured sculptures of scrap wood and iron, representing the alarming state of glaciers in Ladakh due to climate change.

Critiquing the impact of Global North activities on the Himalayas, Philadelphia-based artist Viola Bordon’s The North Face used factory overstock labels to cover a rock.

Besides installations, there were artist film screenings curated by the Dharamshala International Film Festival, school outreach programmes, and performances that kept visitors engaged and inspired.

sā Ladakh also launched its residency programme that invites textile artists to create climate conscious land art using traditional Ladakhi weaving techniques. Aditi Jain from Chennai, the programme’s first artist in residence teamed up with The Himalayan Knot (a Royal Enfield Social Mission collaborative which brings together locals, conservationists, craftspersons and designers) to create two installations: Open Weave and Up and Down. “I find Ladakh to be very textural and I try to replicate that. All the pieces use craft fabric minimising the use of new material . I’ve also incorporated found material from my travels around Leh, like stones and dried plants,” says Jain.

One thing led to another and this traveller found herself at Camp Kharu, a joint initiative between the Royal Enfield Social Mission, the Leh Development Authority’s Rural Development Department, and the local community. Conceived as a response to the growing influx of tourists and the need for sustainable travel infrastructure, this cultural hub nestled along the Leh-Manali highway that includes a café, exhibition spaces, and public amenities is entirely managed by a group of six women from the nearby Kharu village. Everything is sourced locally and visitors can savour a delectable array of authentic Ladakhi dishes while enjoying breath taking views of the Zanskar range and the Indus River. “We felt that as a brand with considerable influence on rider groups and strong connections with the local communities, we could create something that bridges the gap between them,” said Bidisha Dey, Executive Director of the Eicher Group Foundation, the CSR and sustainability arm of Royal Enfield.

Hopefully, future editions of the sā Festival will also inspire visitors to Ladakh to appreciate the great creative potential of this magnificent northern corner of India and understand both its aesthetic power and its fragile beauty.

Shireen Quadri is the editor of The Punch Magazine Anthology of New Writing: Select Short Stories by Women Writers.