Above Water

On the remote island of Sarichef off the Northwest coast of Alaska, 20 miles below the Arctic Circle, there’s a small village they call Shishmaref. Every year, it continues to get smaller as rising water levels erode away at its shores.

In the summer of 2021, two artists were invited to the island to paint a mural, but as they learned more about the culture and the impact of the melting permafrost, they began to appreciate the deeper history of the local Inupiaq people and their struggle to maintain their culture in the face of an impending climate disaster.