Yury Lisovsky is a contemporary Komi artist, photographer, and philosopher, a graduate of the Syktyvkar Art College. He mostly works in the style of ethnofuturism, inspired by Finno-Ugric mythology, ethnic culture, and epic literature.
Lisovsky’s painting “Strange Moon” explores the nature of human life that exists as a combination of the material and the spiritual. According to ancient Komi beliefs, every person has two souls: a lov and an ort. A lov is born together with each human being and leaves the body with the last breath at the moment of death.
An ort is a shadow soul that appears in the first minutes of a person’s life and accompanies them throughout their life. It can only be seen before death, and it remains in the world of the living for forty days after the person has died.
The painting “Strange Moon” is also known as “Ort”. An ort has been interpreted using various images, such as a priest, a child, a woman, or a person without some “afflicted” part of their body. An ort is often depicted using symbols and allegories which explains the artist’s choice of abstract style which in turn allows him to demonstrate concepts in a generalized manner. The painting’s composition refers to ort’s cosmic energy given by the universe to each newborn soul.
Alexander Kotylev, Candidate of Cultural Studies, described the artist’s work in his book “Yury Lisovsky and His Coast of Northern Dreams”,
