SPACES by Dar'ya Starykova

The Charlotte Museum is excited to be hosting an exhibition of photographs by Dar’ya Starykova, an artist starting her third year at Elam Art School. Dar’ya is a Ukrainian born, Aotearoa artist whose most recent work in mixed media focused on queer history and lived experiences both here and in Ukraine. This exhibition is the first showing of these photographs, which are part of the Queer Spaces of Aotearoa (Auckland 1) project Dar’ya completed in 2021, but was unable to show due to the COVID-19 lockdown. It had began as a personal research project that found its way into her art practise when her analog photography course assigned a ‘Spaces’ brief in the second semester of 2021. The project has been supported by the Charlotte Museum by providing historical narrative to accompany the photos, many of which depict spaces, places and venues on the HERstory Walk of K’Rd the museum will be hosting again for Pride 2022. The photographs are black and white images that were taken on film with a Nikkormat Camera, 28mm lens, during level 4 and beginning of level 3 lockdown in 2021. Dar’ya comments how this “worked out in my favour, giving me a chance to shoot the sites while they were almost entirely deserted. Allowing you to focus on the architecture and what's left of the buildings past lives, while they stood frozen in time.”