Diana Markosian photographs a ballet on the edge
Backstage at the Cuban National Ballet, Diana Markosian photographs what remains when the curtain falls. In her exhibition titled “Fantômes”, closing at Picto in Brooklyn this week, bodies appear and dissolve, suspended between discipline and doubt, tradition and disappearance.
By Jonas Cuénin. Photos by Diana Markosian.
Diana Markosian’s images drift through corridors, rehearsal rooms, and dimly lit stages, where ballet survives under fragile conditions. Formerly a dancer herself, Markosian approaches this world from within. Her camera does not document performance but lingers on gestures, pauses, and moments of retreat—where the weight of history quietly settles. Inspired by Victor Hugo’s Fantômes and by the ballet Giselle, first staged in Paris in 1841, the series unfolds around a story of love, loss, and return. In Cuba, however, Giselle carries a different resonance. Once a symbol of national pride, ballet now stands on uncertain ground.
Here, the dancers rarely appear fully solid. Bodies multiply, blur, and dissolve, as if caught between presence and absence. Tulle becomes mist; movement leaves traces rather than conclusions. The stage turns into a space of suspension, where identity is never fixed. As Jennifer Homans wrote in The New Yorker, these figures seem to “fray, duplicate, and mist at the edges.”
Light behaves like memory in these photographs—unstable, selective, sometimes violent. Color leaks across the frame; darkness swallows faces and gestures. Rather than clarity, Markosian privileges atmosphere. For truly beautiful images.
At the center of “Fantômes” is also transmission: what is preserved, what survives only through repetition. Ballet here is not spectacle but endurance—maintained through ritual, discipline, and collective belief. Diana Markosian photographs a community bound by devotion, yet haunted by impermanence. And an uncertain future.
“Fantômes”, by Diana Markosian is produced by SQUADRA and on view at PICTO New York in Brooklyn until December 19, 2025.
