Karlo Kacharava

Before painting My Daughter is a Prison Ballerina in 1992, Karlo Kacharava developed the subjects of the painting with pen sketches whilst serving in the military in Mirni, Siberia; home of a Soviet high security prison. These prisons had designated storytellers, razkazchik, a role Kacharava assumed outside of the prison walls to the fellow soldiers. Below the drawing of the nude ballerina wearing a tutu, Kacharava wrote ‘old man in prison is telling stories and drawing pictures of his stepdaughter, who’s a ballerina. He is subjected to mocking and pity from recidivists and criminals whose dreams were fuelled by the drawings of the ballerina in erotic poses.’ The drawing is framed by three framed exclamations of ‘My Daughter is a Prison Ballerina!’

The sketch gives insight into Kacharava’s simultaneous way of thinking, and method of combining international with local stories. The name of the American art collector Daniel Wolf headers the page in large letters, a figure known for his unique photography collection, love of nature and his close bond with his father. Beneath his name in Russian, Kacharava wrote ‘the story with a happy ending,’ perhaps a hopeful figure for Kacharava following the early death of his father. Joyce Baronio, a friend of Wolf, is also referenced in large letters with the address 42nd Street Studio. The list on the right translates as ‘dedicated to the creators of new Societ art: Ilya Kabakov, Eric Bulatov, Francisco Infante, Levan Chogoshvili, Kostya Zvezdochetov, Mamuka Tsetskhladze, Yuri Albert.’ On the left is the note ‘the publisher is an independent Christian Democratic publishing house...for additional information please vote for them,’ imbuing the sketch with ironic humour.

The painting is made up of painted and collaged elements on canvas. The found objects pasted onto the grey backdrop of three gymnasium tickets and cigarette wrappers (Gitanes Legeres, a French brand popular in Germany where Kacharava visited) suggest the material vestiges of a father and daughter. This relationship correlates to how Kacharava had to assume a paternal role to his younger sister, Lika. A domestic setting is indicated by the ‘New Christmas Tree’ delicately captioned in Georgian script. Kacharava used paint to narrate scenes like a cinematographer would annotate a storyboard. The filmic lead is the central woman having her chin raised, a gesture common in ballet classes to improve poise. The adjacent dark window on the left evokes a stage curtain, reinforced by the central figure taking a deep bow.

Ballet was integral to socialist popular culture and was made extremely accessible to the masses; tickets were either free or heavily discounted. The Soviet Union used the dance as an instrument to galvanise and inspire workers. As Georgia declared its independence in 1991, a year prior to My Daughter is a Prison Ballerina, the references to ballet and imprisonment are loaded with metaphor. Two purple rabbits and a horse occupy the top right area, imposed onto a train station, captioned ‘Night - a station with rabbits’ underneath drawing of the sun and moon in different stages. The fairy tale scene beside the collage exemplifies Kacharava’s style of creating an intricate network of citations that flit between fact and fiction. [PDG for Tate]


________
Kacharava diary entry in Cezanne poetry book (2025):

My Daughter is a Prison Ballerina
It’s beautiful weather for the lonely to dream in. A little girl awaits her
father in front of a large arch. In her sweating hands she holds a large,
heavy Soviet backpack full of ugly books.
Her father, locked in some kind of office, curses himself. Her mother
calls him, she complains, cursing and swearing. And their little
daughter is still standing there in front of the arch in the wind, unable
to tell if she’s hot or cold because of her ugly coat, heavy, stifling. The
only thing she likes is the American jeans bought a month before.
Maybe they’re Turkish or Maltese. What does she know about Malta,
anyway?
Here she is already hungry. They sell lousy meat pies next door. That’s
not good, because her mother doesn’t let her eat them. But she’s
already had those pies three times with a girl from school who has
endless pocket money and a very dark-haired, loud-talking mother.
When her father finally comes out of the subway, his little daughter is
almost crying from the cold, her feet are frozen, she’s needed to go to
the bathroom for a long time already and needs to go even more now
that her father’s here.
They walk hand in hand, and the father tries to joke, he wants to buy
some sweets or candy but there aren’t any in the shops they pass.
He can’t find cigarettes, so the father asks a stranger for a cigarette.
At that moment, the father forgets all about the candy. Then it comes
back to him: he has a couple of chestnuts left over from the day
before. The two of them go back down into the subway.
There’s no sour cream on sale at the cafeteria, but mother buys it out
of their secret stock from a lady she knows who works there. Then she
goes out into the street and she also descends into the subway.
It was a marvel, almost like a large and empty bus, brightly lit, with its
headlights on, on a cold, rainy night in some Soviet city.
My Daughter is a Prison Ballerina is made up of stories written in

prison by an intellectual father about his imaginary daughter or step-
daughter. He evoked the special empathy, interest and the cynicism

of the repeat offenders with those tales. He brightened their depraved
dreams with his stories. In addition, he used blue pens to draw various
erotic pictures depicting “his daughter”... My Daughter is a Prison
Ballerina is a collection of absurd anti-fairy-tales with happy endings.
The Cooperative Publishing House of the Christian Democratic Party
of Georgia has undertaken to publish this strange collection of stories.
They go to work.
Dad eats meat,
Mom makes a phone call.
Dad takes an extinguished cigarette and lights it again.
Mom goes to the bathroom.
Dad thinks about snow and another woman.
Mom flushes the toilet,
Dad drinks his tea.
Mom thinks about an abortion,
Dad makes a phone call.
Mom pulls her coat on,
Dad hangs up the receiver.
Mom tells Dad goodbye, Dad says that
he’s leaving soon, too.
I saw them together,
seven or eight years ago,
after the parade,
on a street festooned with flags.
Seven or eight years ago –
way back, that is,
when you could still go to the store for butter,
wine and cigarettes.