The opening for this exhibition is happened on May 10, 2025 at 3 pm, at Taragaon Next.
As glaciers shrink, glacial lakes are formed, which can burst and trigger devastating floods. Further consequences include landslides, disrupted ecosystems, and a threat to communities that rely on glacial meltwater as a key source of clean water for the region.
These alarming transformations serve as a backdrop to the central focus of the artwork—glaciers seemingly suspended in a liminal time-space, a delicate balance between their final melting and the then moment. Through two distinct but connected artworks, the exhibition highlights our current climate situation and explores the profound relationship between climate change and glaciers. The presented artworks encourage us to think about the delicate state of our natural environment and the critical necessity for mitigating actions in the event of a looming/imminent ecological disaster. Their size, fragmented presentation and imperfections in the making reflect a melancholic apathy juxtaposed with urgency.
Glaciers account for approximately three-quarters of the world’s freshwater supply, and climate change is causing these massive ice formations to melt or, worse yet, to disappear completely. In 2023, the average daily temperature was one degree warmer than the average temperature recorded between 1850 and 1900. The shift in temperature may seem minor, but it has a significant effect. This warming leads to more rain than snow. Without fresh snow, glaciers and ice sheets become vulnerable as they melt little by little year after year.
Between the 1400s and the mid-1800s (known as the Little Ice Age), glaciers in the Himalayas lost about 40% of their ice mass. But in recent decades, that loss has accelerated tenfold, driven largely by intensified human activity and the effects of industrialisation. The rapid melting is not a distant problem that occurs far away in the mountains. Its implications affect millions of people living in South Asia. As glaciers shrink, glacial lakes are formed, which can burst and trigger devastating floods. Further consequences include landslides, disrupted ecosystems, and a threat to communities that rely on glacial meltwater as a key source of clean water for the region.
About the Artist
Lingam. K is a research and lens-based artist focused on narrating the complexities of our relationship to nature and how it is tied to culture and the modern world. In his art practice, Lingam employs alternative processes, digital and field recording techniques to create visual representations and narrate the glacial melt phenomenon. He is currently a PhD student at RMIT University researching how a syncretic narrative of scientific and traditional knowledge can create new ways to visualize and address the effects of glacial melt in the Nepal Himalayas.
