The 360° EVEREST Panorama, started in 2003, was Yadegar Asisi’s pilot project for all subsequent large-scale panoramas. 2003 represented the 50th anniversary of the first ascent to the peak in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. The exhibition depicts the highest mountain in the world with its 8,000 km pinnacle from the 6,000 km high Western Cwm in the Himalayas. This was the setting of the last base camp before the final climb to the top of Mount Everest.

The Panorama reveals an abstract and seemingly endless landscape of icy mountains around Everest in unique interplay of colours, with hues ranging from light blue to aquamarine, snow white to grey all the way to pitch black. Visitors get an inside look at a hostile yet fascinating other world. Signs of life are few and far between, and include individual birds in the air or hikers on the way to the top that look like tiny black dots in the distance.

Conceptually, the project also deals with contrasting approaches to the highest mountain in the world: while in far eastern Buddhist culture, Mount Everest is viewed as a thing to be revered and left unspoilt, the west assumes the world is meant to be measured and conquered.