THINKING HANDS

In June 2026, LAMO presented Thinking Hands, an exhibition emerging from the 10th Art for Change International Artist Residency. Sixteen artists from India and around the world spent two weeks in Ladakh engaged in immersive experiences, conversations, and art-making around the theme “What to Do with Technology: Human Being in an Age of Tech.”
The residency explored questions surrounding technology, humanity, and our relationship with the world around us. What is technology? What does it mean to be human in an increasingly technological age? And what can Ladakh’s landscape, communities, and long-standing traditions reveal about the ways in which human beings might live meaningfully and sustainably?
The title Thinking Hands was inspired by Juhani Pallasmaa’s The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture (2009), which considers the relationship between thinking, making, and embodied experience. The exhibition reflected on how knowledge is developed not only through intellectual inquiry but also through physical engagement—with materials, landscapes, people, and place.
Ladakh provided a distinctive setting for these explorations. During the residency, the artists spent time in the landscape and encountered both its enduring traditions and the visible effects of rapid modernization. They visited Leh’s Old Town and Stok Palace, met with His Highness King Gyalpo Jigmed Wangchuk Namgyal, and visited the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL), where they engaged with founders Sonam Wangchuk and Gitanjali Angmo. They also met Professor Elijah S. Gergan for conversations on Ladakh’s history and contemporary realities.
These encounters encouraged the artists to consider the relationship between indigenous knowledge and contemporary technology, and the challenge of pursuing economic and technological development while retaining the cultural, environmental, and community values that have sustained life in Ladakh for generations.
A central metaphor for the residency was the rabsal, the traditional projecting wooden balcony found in Ladakhi architecture. Historically, the rabsal served as a place of warmth, gathering, hospitality, and observation—a threshold between the interior of the home and the surrounding landscape. For the artists, it came to represent the human need for connection: to one another, to the land, and to the places we inhabit.
Working within the limits of time and available materials, the artists developed their works through experimentation, collaboration, observation, and engagement with local knowledge. The resulting exhibition brought together diverse artistic responses to questions of technology, embodiment, sustainability, community, and what it means to be human.
Thinking Hands documented the culmination of this shared period of living, learning, and making in Ladakh. Presented at LAMO, the exhibition offered an opportunity to encounter the artists’ reflections on a rapidly changing world while considering the enduring importance of human connection, embodied knowledge, and our relationship with the environment.