Russian vs non-Russian press: the response to Zhukova’s “racist chair” photo

A photograph of Dasha Zhukova, the partner of billionaire Roman Abramovich, sitting on a chair resembling a semi-nude black woman on her back with her legs in the air, has sparked accusations of racism among bloggers and journalists in the US and Europe. By contrast, criticism has been muted in the Russian media, where journalists have simply reported on the events and the scandal caused abroad.

The image was published on online fashion magazine Buro 24/7 yesterday to accompany an interview with Zhukova about her contemporary art magazine Garage where she is editor-in-chief. Critics were particularly outraged by the timing of the photo’s publication, which coincided with Martin Luther King Day, a US public holiday held in honour of the civil rights activist. The founder of Buro 24/7, socialite Miroslava Duma, hailed as a 2014 tastemaker by the Financial Times, has also come under fire for the lack of judgement exercised by her staff.

Following the public backlash, the image was cropped so that only the chair’s “legs” were visible. Both Duma and Zhukova promptly removed the photo from their respective Instagram accounts. It-girl-turned-entrepreneur Zhukova has since apologised for any offence caused: “This photograph, which has been published completely out of context, is of an artwork intended specifically as a commentary on gender and racial politics. I utterly abhor racism and would like to apologise to anyone who has been offended by this image.”

The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker tweeted the following in response: “Updated Zhukova ‘racist chair’ story with her quote that pic ‘taken out of context’. Wonder what actual context was?!” Elsewhere on Twitter, journalist Musa Okwonga wrote: “The slave chair is the perfect metaphor for how black women are treated by the fashion industry.” For a staff writer at Marie Claire, the act was more about sexism than racism: “Even if the skin tone was different, the photograph would still be offensive. Women seem to be the brunt of society, and no one deserves to be sat on, whether it is for art’s sake or not.”

Criticism has been virtually absent in the Russian media with several media outlets taking an irreverent view. A writer from Russian youth culture magazine W-O-S published an inverted version of the picture on their Facebook, jokingly implying that it was in fact the black woman who was sitting on Zhukova. Online news website Lenta took to Twitter with the following quip: “Cynical Dasha Zhukova has published a photo where she is sitting on a black person on Martin Luther King day.”

The chair was designed by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard and modelled on Chair (1969), an artwork by British artist Allen Jones of a white woman in the same posture. According to Jones, the Chair was intended to depict representations of women as they exist in the male imagination. In 1986 it was damaged by feminist campaigners who doused it in paint stripper.