"Melting identity" is a photographic meditation on identity as both fragile and fluid, shaped by memory, migration, and the inevitable decay of what I try to preserve. The name of the project is derived from Eternal Permafrost land I am originally from. Due to climate change it is melting causing global warming and opening up its secrets that were hidden there for millions years.
The project centers on the symbolic and physical process of melting-ice turning into water, sharp edges softening, images blurring and reflects the transformation of selfhood in both intimate and cultural dimensions in the time when globalization has shrunk the world.
As an immigrant in the US and a Sakha indigenous woman navigating multiple cultural codes and languages, I tried to showcase visibility and erasure, between belonging and becoming using one photograph. In my mixed media project using materials like frozen photographs, dried petals, and digitally warped prints, I create images that feel both intimate and unreachable. The ice becomes a metaphor for memory: it preserves, but it isolates. Flowers represent inherited beauty and grief-pressed between layers like language slipping through generations. As the ice melts, petals dislodge, and faces distort or disappear, we witness the slow unraveling.
