Donbass Chocolate 1997

Arsen Savadov created this photograph, ‘Donbass Chocolate’, and it’s a real collision of worlds, isn’t it? The photo is mostly dark, coal dust covering the miners bodies with stark white tutus, it's a powerful, theatrical statement. The photograph is all about contrasts, that tension between grit and grace, work and performance. Look at the texture, the smoothness of the skin, the rough hewn texture of the coal and the delicate tulle of the skirts. There’s a miner holding a pickaxe, it anchors the narrative in a real place, a real job, and makes the choice of tutu more unexpected. In my own work, I often think about what it means to ground an image, what makes it stay still long enough for you to look? It's like a strange, poetic dance, a visual poem about labor, identity, and unexpected beauty, a bit like what Matthew Barney does in his Cremaster Cycle, that sense of the theatrical and the uncanny. Ultimately, the work embraces ambiguity, leaving room for multiple interpretations, rather than offering fixed meanings.