What do tons of ice in the Egyptian desert say about climate change?

An artist from one of the coldest places on Earth finds her dreamy creativity is the perfect fit for the ‘easy-going’ life of Cyprus

What can you say about a seven-ton, six-metre ice sculpture in the middle of the Egyptian desert? The answer is ‘Nothing’, or at least it doesn’t matter. The image is so outrageous – seven tons of ice, plonked amid burning-hot sand – it requires no context, no explanation. The story writes itself.

That said, it’s still a bit surprising to meet Elena Tengri, the 27-year-old Siberian artist behind ‘Ashes of the Cold’, the title of the aforementioned artwork. You’d expect the author of such a grand gesture to be authoritative, maybe a bit flamboyant – but Elena is modest and jovial, and immensely good-natured.

We meet at Pieto in old Nicosia, a cosy place full of cushions and knick-knacks; she’s visibly delighted. Interior design is one of her passions, though she’s currently – following a rather circuitous route – studying Animation at Cyprus Academy of Art in Limassol. It’s also an unseasonably warm day, 30 degrees in late October – and that too is relevant, ‘Ashes’ being explicitly a work about climate change.

Making the sculpture, and surrounding it with searing desert heat, was only half the project. The other half – and all that remains, now that it’s over – was watching (and filming) it melt, a process that took about 60 hours: “A stark reminder that the cold we once considered eternal can vanish almost instantly under the pressure of heat”, as it says on Elena’s website.

The topic hits her in quite a particular way since she comes from the Republic of Sakha (also known as Yakutia), one of the world’s coldest places – a vast tract of wilderness with a population of about one million (about the same as Cyprus) in an area of three million square kilometres, twice the size of France, Spain, Germany and the UK combined. “I don’t think there’s even one person that’s discovered all of the places,” says Elena in her accented English, “since it’s mostly forest.”

Sakha simmers in the background as we sip drinks (tea for her, lemonade for me). The ground there is mostly permafrost – Yakutsk, her hometown, is known as the ‘city on stilts’, everything built on a buffer of concrete pillars – and the permafrost is melting as the Earth warms, releasing methane and making things even worse. But Sakha is also the place of Elena’s childhood, evoking memories of icy-cold winters, hot, brief summers, and forest excursions to pick mushrooms and berries.

She left at 14, moving to her grandma’s house outside Moscow. Her parents were already divorcing, though she remains close to both of them. Elena’s dad is in IT, and travels a lot: “He is entrepreneur,” she explains with a laugh. “He [always] made me say ‘entrepreneur’ – like, I usually said ‘businessman’, but he is an entrepreneur!”.

It’s something of a family joke that Elena’s younger sister (currently studying at Cornell) is more like their dad, whereas Elena inherited more of their mum’s dreamy creativity. She’s not, she admits, an especially pushy person. Her strength lies more in being “protective” – an Earth-mother strength – enfolding those she loves (whether it’s people or art projects) in a shielding embrace.

She likes cosy nooks like Pieto, and the “easy-going” life of Cyprus. She absolutely loves being in Nature, almost spiritually so – and indeed ‘Tengrism’ is coincidentally the name of the native religion in Sakha, a type of animism locating spirits in the world around us.

“When you live in such places, you kind of feel something,” muses Elena, thinking of her forested homeland. “Sometimes you just hear sounds, and you’re like ‘What is it?’. It’s not an animal, it’s just something really nice and beautiful – like, I dunno, some kind of elves!… It’s an amazing feeling, when you just stay in Nature and feel a flow of something coming through you.”

As a kid, she was always drawing, “but it was never taken seriously”. The Russian education system is a little weird, being apparently geared to child prodigies. “You can go to music school or art school only when you’re 6-7 years old,” i.e. when you’re starting primary school anyway; after that, you’re too old. Elena missed that window – and has spent much of her life trying to find some outlet for her naturally imaginative temperament.

She wasn’t depressed, just a bit lost. “I was doing well as a kid. I had many friends, I was always joking around – but inside I was like, ‘What do I do in life? What is my purpose?’.”

Her parents suggested Marketing, which “combines business and creativity”. She gave it a go, but it wasn’t for her: “I couldn’t do economics, I was like ‘No, this is killing me’.” Her dad moved to Silicon Valley, and the daughters followed – Elena to study photography at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. “But it was not really easy to be in the USA. They have a totally different culture.”

Big-city life didn’t really agree with her (Yakutsk is about the size of Nicosia). “I had struggles with anxiety there. Because in America there are so many people who are – I dunno, not really dangerous, but the feeling of everything together just makes you anxious. You feel sometimes you are in danger, because there are people who have guns, and some crazy people.”

The course wasn’t quite what she expected; the daily commute wore her down. Her body broke out in allergic reaction, “responding to all this stress I was having”. And there’s something else too – because Elena has a daughter, and, though she doesn’t say if the child was in California with her, the weight of motherhood surely added to her worries.

“At the same time, the war [in Ukraine] happened.”

This, in many ways, was the last straw – “because in America they really pressed you on that. Like, ‘You are Russian. Do you know what’s happening? What your country is doing?’. And you’re like, ‘But I have no deal with that! I’m just a small woman from that place’.”

That’s a whole other matter, Elena’s relationship with Russia. She went back to Moscow to start “healing”, she says – but she also knew she couldn’t stay, the climate was just too oppressive; everything was (and is) censored. “It still makes me tear up,” the issue of politics in Russia – the frustration, the sense of being powerless, as a person and especially an artist. “I had ideas of creating something political – but I was so scared. Because I was a mum, in Russia, alone…”

Instead she ended up reconnecting with her Sakha heritage – though not just yet, there was one more move to make. Her dad suggested Cyprus, an “easy place” with good schools and a big Russian community.

Elena arrived a year ago, just in time for summer – and the most amusing part of our interview is perhaps that a woman from the coldest city on the planet (winter temperatures in Yakutsk regularly drop to -40 degrees Celsius) is considerably more relaxed about the Cyprus summer than the average Cypriot:

“It’s not that hot, actually,” she remarks with a straight face. “I think it’s really nice.” She gasps with unfeigned astonishment: “The sea’s so warm in summer. It’s like, how is it even possible? So warm!”.  

Limassol agrees with her more than San Francisco ever did. “You have a sea here, you have a university here. You just have this kind of relaxed vibe – but, at the same time, it’s possible to build something.”

That ‘something’ turned out to be ‘Ashes of the Cold’, inspired by the English artist Andy Goldsworthy (who specialises in so-called “land art”) but also the Sakha legend of the ‘Bull of Cold’, whose breath brings winter to the world. Elena’s original plan was to sculpt an entire bull out of ice – but the design was later changed to a pair of horns, each one tapering down to a thin tip.

The scale of the project changed too – for which she credits her family, who also seem to be her biggest cheerleaders. (The funding for ‘Ashes’, an estimated €20,000, came from a combination of family support and Elena’s own savings.) “They told me, ‘You’re thinking too small’,” she recalls, “‘You need to go bigger. Make it huge! Surprise everyone!’… ‘Spread your wings,’ they said.”

Who said?

“All of them. My sister, my mum, my dad, even my daughter. They’re all pushy except me, I think!” Elena laughs. “They told me, ‘You chose this dream, you chose this path. So start to think as an artist. Don’t be shy, don’t be small – you should be an artist!’… I love them so much.”

A week with an ice-sculpture master back in Yakutsk helped to focus her mind – but also made it clear that blocks of ice might be problematic in a hot place: they’d become unstable, and might topple over and kill someone. Besides, “we had huge trouble to find solid pieces of ice in Egypt. They don’t have it”.

Instead, she decided to experiment with crushed ice: “I crushed it even more – by blender, just crushed it into smaller pieces – and it started to stick together really good”. Packed together, it worked like a glue. She also found New Level Agency (“just by browsing on Google”), an event-management company in Egypt who were invaluable in obtaining permits, and logistics in general. And of course she bought lots and lots of ice – packet after packet, seven tons of it in fact.

In the end, the lesson of the story seems to be this. An idea may be utterly mad – seven tons of ice in the middle of the desert, say – but if someone has the audacity to conceive of it, and the discipline to put the pieces in place, the actual execution of the idea is surprisingly straightforward.

Elena made a cardboard-and-metal form which could be broken into pieces. Once in Egypt, it took about 50 minutes to assemble the form, then an hour to pack it with ice, brought by truck to the desert location – and that, more or less, was it. (Not entirely, in that there were actually two locations; but it doesn’t change the point.) All that remained was to film the thing melting, as a kind of poetic metaphor for our own helpless transience in the face of natural forces.

“I think it turned out very beautiful,” says the artist, sipping tea in old Nicosia – and of course its ephemeral nature makes it even more beautiful, though it also doesn’t leave her with much to show (just an oddly poignant one-minute video). “I need more works,” admits Elena Tengri – but for now she’s doing fine, taking time to “think and reflect” and enjoying life on the island.  

You’d think she’d be stressed, being a single parent (and a naturally anxious person) with no real support system, while also doing freelance work and going to class four days a week – but “the life in Cyprus is really easy-going,” she says. “You just take your time, sit, drink coffee and wait… This is something I really like”.

Not to mention “your attitude towards products,” she adds unexpectedly. “I like how people here really respect a good tomato… I understand now what is a good tomato”.

Actually, tomato season is over, I note ungraciously. Nothing good till next summer.

“It’s OK,” she replies, smiling gently. “I’m from the most northern part of Russia, that doesn’t have the nicest products… People here are really connected to the ground. I love it so much.”

Almost time to go – but I have to wonder. She’s seen quite a lot in her 27 years, from semi-rural life in one of the world’s most remote regions to “the really wealthy side of San Francisco”, the tech bros and investors her dad used to work with. What kind of lifestyle appeals to her personally?

“My own,” replies Elena. “Just with my own flow. I don’t need much stuff, but I want to spend everything I have on something I want to make. Like, my own deal… This feeling of when you build something, and you achieve something – this is like the happiness in your life.” Ice in the desert? Why not?