North Adams, MA, January 17, 2025.— MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) in North Adams, in collaboration with The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), will present the exhibition Ohan Breiding: Belly of a Glacier, a series of photographs and video that ruminates on the imminent loss of the Rhône glacier, amplifying the current state of climate emergency while expressing the intimate entanglement of human and environmental well-being. The exhibition is on view at MASS MoCA from February through December 14, 2025.

In 2019, Iceland constructed the first memorial to mark the death of its Okjökull glacier. Since then, funerals have been held around the world to mark the melting of glacier bodies. Consisting of an experimental documentary film and a photographic installation, Breiding’s Belly of a Glacier captures the efforts of the residents of Obergoms, Switzerland, to drape the nearby Rhône Glacier with thermal blankets to insulate it from rising temperatures. Despite these hope-filled actions of ecological care, scientists predict the Rhône will have fully melted by 2050.

“Ohan Breiding’s work is a powerful, intimate portrait of a dying glacier,” said Susan Cross, MASS MoCA Senior Curator. “The stunning photographs and video make the loss feel very personal—as it should, given that we are part of the ecosystem being forever transformed by climate change.”

The film documents the community at the National Science Foundation’s Ice Core Facility in Lakewood, Colorado, who are preserving ancient ice cores for future generations. Ice is like a time capsule, storing atmospheric debris, including volcanic ash and greenhouse gasses, that can tell us about major natural disasters as well as resulting human activity over thousands over years. Breiding’s project connects acts of mourning to ongoing practices of care that strive to protect the ice — a material that contains both remnants of the past and the conditions of a future world.

“WCMA and MASS MoCA joining together to present Ohan Breiding’s deeply moving and thought-provoking installation exemplifies the best of what our Berkshire arts ecosystem can provide to our visitors and local community,” said Pamela Franks, WCMA Class of 1956 Director. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate across institutions in this way.”

Images courtesy of MASS MoCA. Photographs by Jon Verney.