Arts and Letters

A glacier has a tongue, foot, face, toe, snout, arm, and belly—points where ice meets earth, air, and water. In Belly of a Glacier (2024), artist Ohan Breiding (b. 1981, Tucker, GA; raised in Herrliberg, Switzerland) explores these ancient bodies of ice as living archives, moving between the sterile chambers of the US National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility in Colorado, where scientists preserve cores containing up to 800,000 years of climate data, and the Rhône Glacier in the Swiss Alps near Breiding’s childhood home. Through petrographic views of ice cores, archival footage, and family photographs, Belly of a Glacier examines how glaciers witness both planetary and personal histories.

At the Rhône Glacier, expected to disappear by 2050, local residents cover the five-acre surface with thermal blankets each spring, attempting to slow its retreat. Breiding interweaves footage of the glacier's calving—where massive pieces of ice break away into rushing water—with scenes of a calf's birth in nearby alpine pastures. The film culminates in scenes of glacier funerals—a recent ritual where communities gather to mourn glaciers when they disappear. Belly of a Glacier underscores the shared vulnerability and intimate interdependence of human, animal, and environmental well-being.

Arts and Letters will present Breiding’s film in our East Gallery screening room from January 9 through February 9, 2025.

On Saturday, January 25, 2025, at 4pm, Breiding will talk with performance studies scholar and educator Katie Brewer Ball (KBB) about how personal narratives intersect with histories of ice in Belly of a Glacier. The conversation will cover their parallel investigations: Breiding's consideration of the Rhône Glacier through childhood memory and family photographs, and Brewer Ball's research on Arctic science through their grandfather's work in Utqiagvik, Alaska. Seating for the event is limited, and reservations are recommended. A reception will follow.