“You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the currents swirled around me… So I said, ‘Will I ever again look upon your holy temple?’” — Book of Jonah
This anguished cry, spoken from within the belly of the great fish, resonates profoundly with the artistic journey of Elize Dajose. Born in Moscow in 1973 and now based in the United States, Dajose’s work mirrors the turbulence of exile, inner transformation, and the eventual emergence of spiritual clarity. Much like the biblical prophet Jonah, whose disobedience led to his symbolic rebirth from the womb of the sea creature, Dajose’s own emigration and stylistic evolution evoke a voyage into the unknown — one that has birthed a deeply spiritual and distinctly modern visual language.
The Journey of an Artist Across Time and Space
Dajose’s artistic foundation was laid in Moscow, where she honed her skills through private workshops and participation in creative associations. Her early explorations spanned oil painting, sculpture, ceramics, and collage — a multi-disciplinary fluency that remains evident in her mature work. But it was the seismic shift of her emigration to the United States in 2016 that marked a turning point. Leaving behind the cultural familiarity of Russia, she entered a period of personal and creative upheaval, similar to Jonah being cast into the stormy sea.
This rupture with her homeland did not sever her artistic roots; rather, it brought them into new alignment. In the dislocation, she found a fertile space to reconcile her Russian heritage with the visual rhythms of her new American context. Her paintings and mixed-media works reflect this dual influence, harmonizing the structured intensity of Russian avant-garde pioneers like Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, and Wassily Kandinsky with the emotive depth and openness of American abstract expressionists such as Mark Rothko.
Sacred Symbols in a Fragmented World
Elize Dajose is not merely a formalist; her work is theological. She engages deeply with biblical narratives, particularly moments of spiritual reckoning, exile, and transformation. Her compositions often reference Orthodox iconography — halos, crosses, temple structures — but these symbols are never rendered literally. Instead, they emerge through abstract geometry, distressed textures, and rhythmic calligraphy, as though glimpsed in a dream or reflected in turbulent water.
Her interest in sacred space is especially poignant in light of Jonah’s lament: “Will I ever again look at your holy temple?” This question haunts the viewer in Dajose’s work. Her abstract temples are not grand architectural declarations, but fractured outlines and metaphysical suggestions. They are memory-structures — homes lost and homes imagined — floating amidst the swirl of color, as if struggling to hold form in a shifting tide.
The calligraphy in her work, sometimes legible and sometimes not, adds to this layered spirituality. Words are treated not as static text, but as visual sound — like echoes of a liturgy remembered more in spirit than in syntax. Language, too, is transformed by exile and abstraction.
Cosmism and the Womb of the Sea
In addition to her biblical themes, Dajose explores Cosmism, a Russian philosophical movement that envisions humanity’s spiritual destiny in relation to the cosmos. Here, she finds an unexpected convergence between Russian and American sensibilities: the utopian scientific vision of Russian thinkers like Nikolai Fyodorov alongside America’s forward-facing optimism and space-age idealism.
This interest in Cosmism further connects her to Jonah’s journey. The whale is not only a place of punishment — it is also a womb. A cosmic chamber. A paradoxical shelter. Within this space, Jonah’s prayer rises, shaped by disorientation and longing for reconnection. Dajose’s canvases, dense with symbolic abstraction, can be understood as contemporary icons of this same tension — simultaneously shelter and abyss, chaos and potential.
A Devotional Practice in Contemporary Form
Dajose’s synthesis of avant-garde formalism and spiritual inquiry positions her work in a rare intersection — one where abstraction becomes a form of prayer. Like Rothko’s color fields, her layered compositions do not demand interpretation so much as invitation. They draw the viewer inward, asking not for understanding but for presence. They offer no easy answers, only the possibility of encounter.
While many contemporary artists distance themselves from the sacred, Dajose boldly enters its domain, using the tools of modernism to express ancient longings. Her engagement with Orthodox theology is not nostalgic or doctrinaire; it is personal, lived, and deeply aesthetic. It reflects a post-emigrant spirituality — one born from rupture and restitching.
A Global Voice with Intimate Resonance
Elize Dajose’s work now resides in private collections across Russia, the United States, and the Philippines — a testament to its universal reach. And yet, each piece feels intimately tied to her own spiritual journey. Her visual prayers emerge from the silence of the studio like Jonah’s prayer from the belly of the beast — honest, elemental, seeking reunion with the divine.
In a world that often prizes surface over depth, speed over contemplation, Dajose’s work invites viewers to linger. To float for a moment in the deep, where currents swirl and symbols speak. To remember that even in exile, even in the womb of the sea, a sacred voice can still rise.
