One sees clearly only with the heart: Olga Chagaoutdinova Blobs

The images in Olga Chagaoutdinova’s series Blobs are disturbing but ultimately poignant reflections on identity and belonging. On first viewing, the Blobs are a series of amorphous black forms against a seamless white background. The images are formally interesting, despite the title, yet they demand that we look beyond their formal characteristics and begin to read the images. On the surface, this is not an easy task; the images offer few initial cues to orient the viewer as to the scale and scope of the objects depicted.  However, as we look at them the figures begin to occupy space asserting their solidity and depth. Looked at as occupying a volume of space, and not simply a surface, it becomes clear that the blobs are in fact bags made of fabric. The size is initially imprecise, they could be handbags, duffle bags etc.; the stretchable black fabric offers suggestions of the forms within through its conformity to the underlying contours. Closer examination gradually reveals the hints of bodily forms, hips, hands, shoulders and heads – what we see in these images is a body in a bag (or bodies in bags).

As pictures of bodies in bags, the images are infused with what we might call a quiet violence; in their erasure of context and identity they reference kidnapping (abduction), loss of identity and reduction  of the body to an object -- death. This is what gives them their disturbing quality. Yet, as we look further we realize that the figures are not struggling against their confinement (they are not held against their will) but are also not inert (they aren’t dead or unconscious).  Chagaoutdinova has placed family members and friends in the bag in order to photograph them. The figures’ isolation speaks in part to the necessity of hiding one’s true self from the politics of the world.  The bag thus functions in part as a healing, aesthetic cocoon.

The series intensifies aspects of her earlier work, stripping it down to focus on the essential core of the human relationships.  The staging of the works is reminiscent of her series The Zone ‘Prisoners’(2005-7) which depicted female inmates against a blank background. However, in this case the seamless backdrop is not referencing the language of institutional photography.  Instead, it represents something like a photography degree zero – an abstracting away of the social context to isolate the viewer’s relationship to the body depicted. All we get in these images is our encounter with another body. In reducing the figures to bodies, the images are, on the surface at least, unlikely portraits.  By covering up their subjects the works deny the link between appearance and character that has been central to the language of portraiture. What happens instead is the works ask their viewers what is essential in our encounters with others through their construction.

The series is inspired by Saint-Exupéry’s classic children’s story Le Petit Prince. The reference is to the narrator’s (largely) failed drawing of an elephant in a snake; the drawing failed because it was unreadable to adults who saw it as a poor drawing of a hat.  However, the drawing was immediately legible to the petit prince. The Prince’s ability to read the image symbolized his ability to ignore or avoid the inessential in favor of focusing on love and friendship. In this the images act as object lessons that reveal how Chagaoutdinova thinks. The Blobs are photographs of invisibility staging for viewers the un-representability of human relations. As Saint-Exupery argues, "One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."