The Harmony Series is a project deeply rooted in my personal history, started a year ago. The series are named after the school of rhythmic gymnastics-“Harmony”,where i spent most of my childhood.
It is in my hometown of Chelyabinsk, a distant place for me now,sprawling from the edges of the mineral rich Ural mountains.
These images for me show the space between body and memory. An image can be an act of looking which both unfold the present and extends escaped memories.
Sport as a system embodies in itself the ideas and traits of its society. The social and gender roles of a country, city can be traced and highlighted through the sport.
The sport of rhythmic gymnastics with its nationalistic pride, beauty and painful reality is set against one of the most polluted and industrially brutal places in Russia, that to me still holds a powerful beauty. The long lost dreams of soviet scale, the loud, gaudy colors of the leotards,an alcoholic who barely acknowledges the camera with nothing more than an empty glance as he fixes his ancient VOLGA-all this holds tangible humanity and deep memories.
As it is usually seen by the spectator, rhythmic gymnastics is a harmonious blend of art and dance. The sport highly emphasizes femininity in girls, which is also inherent in Russian culture itself. The girl is being taught to sculpt her body, perfect her moves, be graceful in every moment, which can only be achieved with endless tedious repetition. From a very early age she becomes aware of her body and the hypnotizing effect it can have on the viewer.
The city plays crucial role in the series. With limited resources and options Chelyabinsk can offer,this sport becomes almost a necessity, a way of social mobility for the young girls.The inherent grace and pain that belongs to gymnastics is juxtaposed with these harsh industrial landscapes, in an attempt to capture the fragile beauty of the place in present moment,constructed from the stain of memory it left behind. [Official Website]
