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CIRCULAR LIVES
A long-term, community-rooted initiative reimagining accessibility, dignity, and participation in Ladakh
Ladakh's Local Context
In Ladakh, people with disabilities navigate some of the most demanding geographical and climatic conditions in the world. Remote terrain, extreme winters, and limited infrastructure restrict access to education, healthcare, mobility, and livelihoods—creating layered challenges within everyday life.
As climate change intensifies—with erratic weather patterns, floods, and infrastructural strain—these vulnerabilities deepen. In this context, accessibility is not simply about inclusion; it becomes fundamental to survival, dignity, and resilience.
Why Regenerative Art Matters?
Art offers a critical bridge in this landscape. Through land art and sensory-based practices, it creates spaces of empathy, visibility, and dialogue—where people with disabilities are not marginalised but actively present as participants and storytellers. By linking cultural heritage, ecological awareness, and accessibility, art becomes a medium that reflects present realities while opening pathways toward more inclusive futures.
Circular Lives is grounded in regenerative art—an approach that prioritises renewal over extraction and long-term impact over short-term output. It brings together ecological sensitivity, local material practices, and interdisciplinary thinking to respond to both environmental and social challenges. Here, regeneration is not only ecological but social—fostering systems that are inclusive, adaptive, and rooted in community knowledge, where care and creation exist together.
Developed in collaboration with PAGIR and DADAA, Circular Lives centres co-creation rather than assistance. It creates a platform where people with disabilities become collaborators—shaping narratives, materials, and methods grounded in lived experience.
This partnership brings together grassroots advocacy, artistic practice, and international expertise in disability arts—building a framework that is locally anchored and globally connected. The process follows a cyclical approach of dialogue, co-creation, and reflection—ensuring that outcomes extend beyond projects into lasting shifts in perception and practice.
Inspiration: Krishna Tashi Palmo
The initiative draws inspiration from artists like Krishna Tashi Palmo, a master of Thangka painting whose journey embodies resilience, devotion, and artistic excellence. Living with polio and navigating social barriers, her practice challenges perceptions of limitation—demonstrating how art can become both a personal and collective force for transformation.
Her presence and engagement with sā Ladakh became a turning point—shaping how the biennale imagines inclusion not as a framework, but as a lived, evolving practice.
“Even if I couldn’t walk or run, at least I moved a little.”
Circular Lives positions accessibility as an embedded principle, not an add-on. It enables pathways where individuals participate as creators, cultural contributors, and decision-makers within their communities.
Through sustained engagement, the initiative seeks to shift narratives, strengthen resilience, and demonstrate that any meaningful vision of sustainability must be inherently inclusive.
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Circular Lives is a long term collaboration of sā Ladakh Biennale with Disability in the Arts, Disadvantage in the Arts, Australia – DADAA and People's Action Group of Inclusion and Rights.