Artist Elena Tengri Uses Sculpting To Soothe The Soul

Elena Tengri is an environmental artist originally from Yakutia, Siberia, now based in Cyprus. Her work explores the intersection of ancient cultural narratives and contemporary environmental challenges. 

At a mere 27 years of age, you come across as incredibly philosophical and promethean. Were there certain influences in your life that nurtured you?   

I think the people who influenced me the most were my parents. They were both born in Yakutia, and they always made me think about important questions and themes in life. For example, my father started a local initiative to clean up the nearby forest because people often left rubbish after picnics. And of course, my parents took me with them to help. I found all kinds of things among the trash. It was a strange and funny but very useful experience for a child. It taught me to respect the cleanliness of nature and the environment. I am still picking up some trash on the streets and while hiking. My mother always tried to recycle materials, even though that is not an easy thing to do in Russia. She often collected boxes filled with plastic and paper, and then we drove to a special place to drop everything off for recycling. That is truly inspiring.

Also, spending so much time indoors during long winters makes you reflect on your path and your place in the world, what kind of meaning you hold for yourself and for the world. When you live surrounded by untouched nature, even the smallest change feels powerful and significant. It makes you more aware of how deeply humans are connected to the environment. 

Your home country is Russia, and to be more specific, Yakutia, aka the coldest inhabited place on Earth. I have read that many live in wooden houses, and the drink, diet and transportation is all limited there. Would you please share some of your personal experiences while living there? Ironically, it is said that Yakutia has hot summers, so I assume that weather intensity is the norm for this region?  

Life in Yakutia is unusual, but I would not call it truly limited. People there are very curious. Even though they live far from everything, they love to explore and learn about the world. That is what really defines them. They want so much, and they always try for it. In the republic, they were among the first to create an online chat portal in the far North back in 1999. In winter, you can see people walking outside even when it is minus fifty degrees Celsius. For us, that is just a normal, average life. We adapt. There are a lot of interesting cultural events, a few theatres, museums, and galleries; even though the population is small and everything is far from big cities. It was the most unusual thing I have ever seen in a small town. There are fewer wooden houses in the city now, mostly apartment buildings, but in the countryside, they are still common. Everyone has heating, so it is never cold indoors - only outside. 

Summers are surprisingly warm. We often swam in the river when it reached around thirty degrees, though that heat only lasts a few weeks. Some people even manage to grow watermelons during that time. My favorite moment was always the first snow. It is the only time when you can actually make snowballs, because for the rest of the winter, the snow is dry and crystal-like. It slips through your hands like sand and covers everything like a white desert. When the sun shines, it sparkles as if the ground were made of diamonds. 

I am aware of your studies in the area of photography. Based on what I know of you, I would guess that you are not a fan of the new iPhone technology, and that you may indeed use things such as pinhole photography. Am I way off base here or? Secondly, how does photography differ as an art form to you versus sculpting or 3D media?  

Honestly, I love all forms of photography. When I was a child, I only knew old-school digital cameras and phones. One day, I found some broken old film cameras, and my mother told me that there are so many other ways to capture the world on film. I got deeply into photography at university. My sister and I used to experiment together, and it was always fun. I am really glad that I dedicated a lot of time to photography, but for me, it remained more of a favorite hobby than a life passion. 

Unfortunately, I never had a chance to photograph my homeland. I will definitely return one day and take some beautiful shots.

With 3D media and installations, it feels different. For me, there is so much joy in simply creating, thinking about the scene and the details, and imagining how people might interact with the composition. 

Photography for me is more about improvisation and impulse, while sculpture or 3D media feels more technical and planned. Yet, both need a lot of experimentation to find the right result. 

You are described as an environmental artist, and it is very clear that you are concerned about the climate crisis. Can you more specifically outline for us your top fears here, and how you hope your work holds an impact on improvement of this crisis?  

 I think you can feel climate change most clearly when you live close to nature. Forest fires always frightened me, especially in my homeland. It is haunting to walk through a burned forest; to see how silence changes there. Extreme heat has become more common, and it affects not only the forests but also the ground itself, because in Sakha (Yakutia)* houses stand on permafrost, and some of them can literally sink. Apartment buildings are built on concrete pillars, so the soil underneath doesn’t melt. I grew up in a very clean place, almost untouched by people, and it is shocking to see pollution elsewhere. My family always tried to be active and take care of the environment: we cleaned forests, collected waste, and always talked about what we could do better. I think that change is natural and constant, and we are part of it. It is not about fear; it’s about awareness and responsibility for what we live with. That is what I try to express through my work - that we are not separate from nature. We are part of the same process. 

*in native language it is Sakha land, but in Russian it is Yakutia, so we have a double name for the region. 

I absolutely love how you use your talents for good. I see that you crafted some illustrations so as to raise money for the Pleistocene Park Foundation. What made you want to partner up with this organization?  

My sister Maiia made a film for the United Nations Global Goals Week in 2022 called Carbon Time Machine. You can find it on YouTube. She talks about methane emissions, how they affect global warming, and how the melting permafrost completely changes the way of life for many people. During that project, we met Sergey and Nikita Zimov, who run the Pleistocene Park in Siberia. That is when Maiia came up with the idea to collaborate with them. She directed everything, and I helped with the NFT illustrations. 

She asked me to draw saber-toothed tigers in a stylized NFT manner for potential sponsors of the park. They turned out very bright and a bit naive. Later, the team decided to add QR codes to the images so people could see which animal had been “adopted” through their donation. It was amazing! It turned into a really creative and meaningful project for me. 

In August of 2025, you created the ice sculpture installation, Ashes of the Cold, at the Petrified Forest National Park in Egypt. There was a total of seven tons of crushed ice, and it took nearly sixty hours to melt - which you then documented on film. As I always feel it best for creators to describe the inspiration behind their creations, do share more about the catalyst for this piece. Secondly, you have said that "ice is a living material, fragile and temporary". Is this also a metaphor for some of our own climates at this time?  

First, I was inspired by Andy Goldsworthy while doing studies in Cyprus. I was fascinated by how he creates natural installations that are both temporary and deeply poetic. I started experimenting with small ice sculptures in my fridge and in nature, but it was not enough. I felt like something was missing. So, I complained to my family, and they encouraged me to think on a larger scale and put more of my purpose and vision into it. I took that literally, and that’s how the giant horns appeared, inspired by the myth of the Bull of Cold.  

It combined everything important to me: my roots, my path, and maybe even how I feel being far from home. I am also like ice brought into the sun. I love Cyprus, but sometimes I miss the cold and the snow. That is how Ashes of the Cold began.  

For me, ice is a living material. It lives only once. Ice is water, and water gives us life itself, so its meaning is very personal to me. It melts like time. Each drop carries both loss and renewal. So yes, it is a metaphor for our changing climate, but also for the fragility of human experience in life. 

If I may ask, who is Master Egor, and what can you share about him?   

Master Egor Stepanov is a Sakha sculptor and a member of the ice art teams that have won and placed in many international festivals*. He is one of those people who make you see beauty in something as simple as frozen water. He started working with ice thirty years ago, when there were no special tools or guidelines - only wooden chisels and imagination. Everything was pure creativity from the beginning, and he completely fell in love with it.  

I studied ice sculpting with him in the spring. We carried heavy ice blocks and worked outside for hours. Since I had not been there for a long time, I felt very cold, but the process and the result were worth it. We created an ice column decorated with different carving techniques. What I enjoyed the most was listening to the master’s stories over a cup of tea in a warm room.  

It is a really dangerous form of art. The sculptures are heavy, the tools are sharp, and the material changes quickly with temperature. I was told that there have even been fatal accidents. That’s why, in my own project, I used crushed ice in a horizontal form instead of solid blocks. At first, the idea was to build a large vertical piece from solid ice, but after meeting Master Egor, I realized how dangerous it could be. I knew I could not make something safe for people in the heat using full ice structures. I am really happy with how everything turned out, especially because the drone photos look just insane.  

I also hope that one day I find a way to represent the creativity and dedication of artists like Master Egor, and the value of this melting, impermanent art, around the world. *https://sakha.to-be-named.org/Stepanov/ 

Lastly, what other professional endeavors do you have in store for this year?  

I am taking time to reflect, to explore, experiment, and to learn more. It is an important quiet period after a huge project. Sometimes you need to pause and listen to yourself, to the world, to what’s next. I am collecting ideas, working on sketches, and rethinking the materials I want to use in the future. It is not the easiest material to work with, but I really like it. I definitely need more practice with it now. I do hope to start a new project next year; something that continues the same dialogue between art, nature, and myself. 

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