Trashman

Olga Chernysheva

2011

Video, 00:06:30.
Materials: projection

Collection: Courtesy of DIEHL Gallery, Berlin.

Chernysheva is always especially attentive to people who for various reasons are made to ‘look invisible’. The video Trashman (2011) portrays an illegal alien who has to stoop to tasks in the twilight zone of the service sector to earn a living. This employee has the job to open a large blue garbage bag during the credits of the played movie. As a live ‘trashman’ he collects all the empty popcorn bags and coke bottles. His calm, self-possessed demeanor recalls the idealized workers of Realist painting or Soviet cinema; yet, here in the new Russia, the model worker stands alone, contemplative, appearing out of place and time, disconnected from the broader social realm moving around him.

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