Whiteout

The project traces the afterlives of imperial expansion in the Arctic, where ideology and the politics of memory remain visible in landscapes and bodies as nature seeps into the urban fabric and militarization reshapes the territory.

Whiteout is rooted in histories of imperial expansion shaped by anthropocentric visions of progress. It examines how traces of ideology and politics of memory leave their traces in bodies and landscapes, while the natural environment seeps into the urban fabric, acting both as a form of resistance and as a sign of decay.

At the center of the project is Vorkuta, a northern industrial city shaped by coal extraction and the Gulag system. In the Arctic terrain, geological, political, and historical layers converge, forming a fragile environment where time acquires an almost tangible presence—settling into architecture, infrastructure, and the human body. During the Soviet era, the conquest of this territory served as both symbolic and material assertion of power. Monumental architecture constructed a representational façade that obscured the systematic exploitation of both people and land. Today, eroded by climate and time, these structures remain as fragile remnants of a system that sought to confine reality within rigid, hierarchical boundaries.

The city is depopulating and its infrastructure is deteriorating. Its end seems inevitable, yet it continues to exist in a state of inertia, as if awaiting its own disappearance. At the same time, military presence intensifies: new bases are emerging on its margins, hidden in the tundra.

I work with images that have been repeatedly reproduced—in museums, on postcards, in newspapers—rephotographing them to trace how meaning shifts through circulation. I also return to the same locations over several years to register how places reflect the changes.

These material and spatial transformations prompt reflection on broader patterns of territorial appropriation, where projects of progress rely on the exploitation of marginalized communities and the violent reshaping of landscapes—from the displacement of indigenous peoples for megaprojects to speculative scenarios of planetary colonization.