Dasha Zhukova: Do these billionaires hate Black people?

I cannot think of any other reasonable explanation other than sheer hatred of the other for buying, and sitting on a Black semi-naked mannequin who is upside down.

Looking at the picture your jaw drops, you plead with your rationale that this is a spoof, and then you realise it isn’t. Dasha Zhukova, the girlfriend of one of the richest men in the world and Chelsea football owner Roman Abramovich, was happily pictured for a photo shoot to promote her new lifestyle magazine.

For many Black people these images remind us of Jimmy Mubenga who was killed by immigration officers who sat on him as he pleaded that he could not breath.

The offensive chair, which was designed by Norwegian artist Bjarne Melgaard, was said to be a statement about race and gender. Well that may be the intent of the designer which you might get away with in an art gallery with clear explanation. But Zhukova was using it as both a chair to sit on and a fashion statement of ‘coolness’.

In Zhukova’s context this really isn’t cool, it’s grotesque in the extreme and that she does't know that it is, is also troubling in the extreme.

Simon Woolley