Nicolas Villaume

Villaume, a National Geographic Society–supported photographer with decades of environmental archive behind him, has long resisted reducing the natural world to mere spectacle. What emerges in Glaciares Andinos is a subtle but sustained critique of our visual habits: the ice that dominates each frame is not the aloof subject of tourist gaze but a living, breathing surface undergoing transformation. In this sense, the show thinks with its material as much as about it: the glacier is both motif and actor.

This formal choice (to move from the static photograph to immersive projection) underscores the exhibition’s didactic intent without ever lapsing into didacticism. The visuals are punctuated by testimonies from Andean community members and environmental specialists, a narrative thread that challenges the viewer to situate aesthetic experience alongside socio-ecological urgency. These voices anchor the sublime landscapes in lived realities, where ice melt is not an abstract statistic but a material crisis already reshaping lives and water regimes across the Andes.

There is a compelling humility in the exhibition’s structure: rather than overwhelm with data or moralizing rhetoric, Glaciares Andinos opens a space for reflection where art and climate science intersect. It insists that beauty does not absolve responsibility, and that our visual economy must evolve if we are to apprehend ecological change with the seriousness it demands. In Buenos Aires, far from the high peaks themselves, this exhibition relocates the Andes into our collective imagination; not as distant backdrops, but as urgent aesthetic and ethical terrains.