MOTH

The artwork was born after moving to Asia.

It explores the possibility of uniting Eastern and Western worldviews within a single human being.

2026

MOTH returns to the playa for a second year. The figure stands again in open desert — wire mesh catching light, three arms reaching into the sky, the insect body holding its contradictions without apology.

Black Rock City is not a destination. It is a condition. Dust, scale, silence, and then sudden intensity. The work was built for this kind of exposure — to be seen from far away and studied from close.

This chapter opens the work to the world beyond the fire. The artist is now reachable. Conversations begin. Collaborations and new chapters wait at the edge of the horizon.

SloMoth camp: 9:00 G Plaza.

2025

The first time MOTH stood on the playa, everything changed. The sculpture left the studio and entered myth — visible to thousands, exposed to wind, dust, and human unpredictability.

Then the losses came. The sword was taken first. Later, the lamp and the book disappeared. Each object carried meaning: will, understanding, exploration — stripped from the body one by one.

Nothing was abandoned. Every piece was recreated by hand and returned to the figure. The work learned something the artist already knew: destruction is never the end of the story. It is sometimes the middle.

MOTH remained standing. Wounded, rebuilt, more present than before.

August

2024

The container was delayed after an explosion at a major Chinese port — weeks became a waiting room, metal sitting in transit while the desert window closed.

When the shipment finally landed, Burning Man had already ended. The playa was empty again. No crowd, no lights, no immediate witness.

Danny Feltsman helped navigate the logistics failures — every setback untangled, every dead end opened into a way forward.

There is a particular silence in arriving too late. The work survived the journey but missed its moment — and in that gap, something else appeared: patience, and the knowledge that art does not always obey the calendar.

March · Bali

2024

The physical sculpture was born here — not as an idea, but as weight, heat, and material. Bali offered craft, ritual, and masters who understand that making and burning belong to the same gesture.

The artist worked alongside Balinese Ogoh-Ogoh builders — artisans who shape monumental figures knowing they are destined for fire. That knowledge changes how you hold the form. Nothing is precious in the wrong way. Everything is precise.

A large ceremonial burning marked the passage from prototype to presence. Smoke rose. The figure changed. Six months of refinement followed — slow adjustments, structural decisions, the body becoming what it needed to be for the desert.

Asia was no longer a backdrop. It was inside the work.

Ceremonial fire performance with MOTH in Bali

2023

For the first time, a community gathered outside Russia around the work. Distance did not weaken the bond — it proved the idea could travel.

At Lampu in Bali, a six-meter fire pictogram burned against the night. Light drew a symbol in the air that people could read without language.

MOTH was becoming more than a sculpture. It was a signal — a way for strangers to stand together around something they could not fully explain, but clearly felt.

MOTH sculpture lit by fire at Lampu, Bali

2021

A large ceremonial burning consumed MOTH in front of a circle of witnesses. Fire moved through the form the way fire always does — without negotiation.

People watched the figure change state. Solid became light. Object became memory. The moment was not destruction for its own sake. It was release.

What remained was not ash alone, but proof: the work could survive its own ending and still mean something the next morning.

Large ceremonial burning of MOTH before a crowd

2018

The idea appeared after Burning Man — not fully formed, but undeniable. A human-insect figure carrying contradictions in one body. East and West. Action and stillness. The individual and the collective.

A community formed around the vision. People arrived with tools, time, and belief. MOTH was not built alone, even when the thought felt private.

Burning the figure became tradition — a ritual repeated until repetition turned into identity. Each fire asked the same question in a new way: what survives when the object disappears?

This is where the long arc begins. Everything after is a consequence of that first spark.

Vitalii Kusaiko at an early MOTH fire gathering

MOTH sculpture on the desert playa at Burning Man

About the Work

Unity through contradiction

This sculpture holds the tension between Western trinity and Eastern duality within a single figure.

Three arms reach outward — will, understanding, exploration — each a way the self shapes reality. Two legs anchor the body in contradiction: light and shadow, life and death, yin and yang held without resolution.

The insect-like form is not metaphor alone. It is a post-human archetype: a being that does not choose between opposites but inhabits them simultaneously. The work invites reflection on unity through contradiction — and on what it means to carry two worlds inside one body.

Vitalii Kusaiko

Born in 1986. Engineer. Later artist.

Most works were collaborative — built with communities, craftspeople, and co-creators across continents. MOTH became the first solo artistic statement: a figure shaped alone, yet inseparable from every fire it passed through.