Rumors of Arctic Belonging
September 3 – 27, 2020
Towering icebergs, doomed expeditions in tall ships, desolate landscapes with naught but howling wind– this was the vast Arctic from the paintings of European explorers in the 19th century. That romance carries on in the 21st century, even as the ice vanishes and increasing numbers of people experience the North in person.
When the future has its way with the North, it will leave a radically altered land. The sea ice and its denizens will have vanished. Contemporary Inuit will be living vastly different lifestyles than that of their ancestors. Future generations will look back to remember a land little understood by outsiders. Will the imaginations of foreigners paint the sole history of an Arctic with ice and snow? What are the memories of the 3 million Greenlandic Kalallit, Alaskan Iñupiat, and European Samí who call the Arctic their home?
Despite my ancestry as a Native Siberian, I experience the Arctic both as an insider and an outsider. My years there have left me with a vision of a multi-chromatic Far North. This is a land blued with ancient ice, deepened by blood, and radiant under the northern lights. My Arctic nostalgia is not for sailing ships, but for skinboats. My strongest memories are intimate ones– the smell of fermented seal oil, the sting of ice crystals on snowmobile rides, and the background din of howling Greenlandic huskies.
A future North awaits– not cold and unchanging, but living, dying and being reborn. Everyday memories of the Arctic will pass forward as they always have, kept by its Indigenous peoples and hidden in plain sight.
Photographer Kiliii Yuyan illuminates the stories of lives bound to the land and sea. Informed by ancestry that is both Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) and Chinese, he searches for human insight through different cultural perspectives. Kiliii makes photographic stories for the pages of National Geographic, other major publications.
Arctic survival skills, coldwater diving, and a penchant for listening have been critical for Kiliii’s projects in extreme environments and cultures outside his own. On assignment, he has survived a stalking polar bear, escaped pounding waves diving with sea otters, and found kinship at the edges of the world.
In 2023, Kiliii received one of National Geographic’s highest honors, the Eliza Scidmore Award, and was named one of PDN’s 30 in 2019. He is a member of Indigenous Photograph and Diversify Photo. His work appears in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Amon Carter Museum, and has been honored by POYi, Leica, PDN, ASMP, CommArts, and Px3. Kiliii also educates and inspires with speaking events around the world, including National Geographic Live. He is based out of traditional Duwamish lands (Seattle, USA), but is usually found beneath the sea or floating on Arctic ice.