Below 2°: Experience A New Delhi Art Installation That Melts As the Planet Warms

In a world that is too quick, too boisterous, and too callous to the earth's gentle wails, Below 2° comes as a slow, mournful sigh. Only this breath is hot. Revealed on World Glacier Day at Karma Lakelands, Below 2° is an example of our melting world; a ticking clock; a warning masquerading as a marvel.

Against the green expanse of a 270-acre eco-resort in Gurgaon, the installation stands out without having to scream. At its centre is a five-foot globe — rounded like the Earth, composed of 1,000 salvaged golf balls, each hand-painted by schoolchildren. Their little strokes bear a burden much greater than their magnitude. They're not merely colours: they're futures.

But what's chilling about Below 2° is not its magnitude or quietness. It's how it vanishes. The planet is made with a specialised wax mixture that starts melting at 53°C — a figure that is not random but ominously feasible in our climatic reality. As the temperature increases, the wax softens, distorts, and dissolves, mimicking the gradual, irreversible destruction of ecosystems, ice caps, and all that we will inevitably endure as a result of the climate catastrophe we're hurtling towards.

The symbolism here is tactile, emotional, and brutal. You don't merely look at what's taking place, you feel it right beneath your skin. That is the goal of Below 2°, an art project conceived by artist and climate campaigner Aakash Ranison and realized in collaboration with the Greener Earth Foundation and Karma Lakelands. The name refers to the target set by the Paris Agreement — a desperate plea to keep global temperature rise below 2°C when compared to pre-industrial levels. Despite this we’re already inching past 1.5 °C and India just recorded its hottest year on record. And in the face of that, what can art do?

As it turns out — quite a lot.

"Art makes people feel things that data and reports can't," Aakash explains. "Below 2° is a visual, emotional, and scientific expression of our planet's crisis."

At the site of the installation, sustainability isn't a tacked-on label — it's the norm. From afforestation and zero-waste initiatives to solar energy and biodynamic agriculture at Karma Lakelands, the resort's been practising the principles Below 2° now holds dear for years. It's no wonder this installation has found its way here. What is surprising — and emotional — is how comfortably the artwork moves into the space. It doesn't read like an afterthought. It feels like it's always been there.

There’s something poetic in the idea that the planet is housed within itself. That a piece of the Earth — built by our hands, warmed by our heat — is melting before us, asking nothing more than for us to pay attention. And what if we do? We may very well recall that the Earth is not an idea. It's not a figure or a news story. It is a body. A delicate, beautiful, intricate body. And as with everybody — it can be injured. But perhaps, with gentle treatment, it can heal as well. This is grief moulded into form; hope melted into wax. It's a generation's prayer that's given substance. And it's melting — slowly, before our very eyes. So what can you do to prevent it?

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