Svetlana Khodzher is a contemporary Nanai artist. She now lives in the town of Troitskoye on the bank of the Amur river in Khabarovsk region of the Russian Far East. She spent her childhood in a traditional Nanai village of Upper Nergen (Verkhniy Nergen) located in the middle stream of the Amur river amid surrounding dense forests inhabited by tigers and bears, and later moved to Lower Manoma (Nizhnyaya Manoma) village located on the bank of the Manoma river (a tributary of the Anyuy river which in its turn is a tributary of the Amur river) also surrounded by vast forests.
Nanai people have inhabited forest areas along the Amur river and its tributaries for thousands of years. They have been fishing and hunting. Their culture is connected with practices of interaction with spirits of nature as well as their ancestors. Shamans have been the ones who provided the connection between the world of people and the world of spirits. Despite shaman practices are not relevant any more in the morden Nanai society older people have been still attached with traditional mindset.
Svetlana Khodzher by practicing her art (drawing, painting, embroidering, cutting out ornaments) is doing a kind of shaman practices as she feels it - occasionally getting a kind of altered state she travels to spirit world and describes her trips in her art works.
The mentioned locations:
Upper Nergen
Lower Manoma
Svetlana Khodzher visiting the Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow on March 2020 to donate some of her art works to the Institute.
https://life-on-earth.ru/russian-far-east/nanai-people-contemporary-art-svetlana-khodzher#sigProIde1241ef393
Art works which Svetlana Khodzher donated to the Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow on February 2020 through Life-on-earth.ru Popular Science Project.
https://life-on-earth.ru/russian-far-east/nanai-people-contemporary-art-svetlana-khodzher#sigProId54fe51ed50
Some of Svetlana Khodzher's trips to the world of Nani people spirits done in 2026 including her observation of a shaman woman meeting a sky dragon (Mudur in Nanai language) - her assistant (guide) spirit - before starting her shamanic practice. The sky dragon (Mudur) once elected the shaman woman to guide and assist her; he was sent by the Sky God Enduri.
https://life-on-earth.ru/russian-far-east/nanai-people-contemporary-art-svetlana-khodzher#sigProIdf3f80e6962
Dragons of Svetlana Khodzher including a young sky dragon (Mudur) curiously looking at a beautiful butterfly sitting on a brach of a tree. Svetlana watched this scene through the window of her house in Lower Manoma on the opposite forested bank of the Manoma river in 2020.
https://life-on-earth.ru/russian-far-east/nanai-people-contemporary-art-svetlana-khodzher#sigProId01c657a9d9