Photo by Enting Zang

STATEMENT

I live and work in Düsseldorf and often in Dakar. Dance is central to my practice, and improvisation is both my method and my language. Each morning, I dance in public space to house music, surrounded by traffic, church bells, and passing bodies. This daily ritual is research, rehearsal, and invitation. I pay attention to how people respond, how movement reshapes space, and how courage builds through repetition.

My childhood was marked by migration and constant movement, from the Volga to German rivers. That experience shaped my understanding of resilience, routine, and the need to show up fully. I began improvising within hip-hop communities, where the body became a site of knowledge, resistance, and connection. Since then, I have been collecting gestures of resilience from diasporic communities through film installations, participatory performances, and public happenings.

I invite people to dance with me in public, to experiment, to step briefly into vulnerability and shared presence. These encounters are not symbolic. They are lived. The movements and exchanges I gather are later translated into physical forms such as glass books, translucent porcelain, and light boxes, where gesture becomes tangible and memory takes shape.

My work is driven by anger at global inequality, but also by hope. I see the body as both weapon and shield, archive and future. I resist passive spectatorship by drawing my audience into action, asking them to move, respond, and take part. Each invitation is a small act of defiance and care, a way of concentrating social energy and imagining what collective presence might make possible.

GRANTS AND RESIDENCIES

2026 Hospitalfield Residency UK

2025 RAW Material Company’s symposium, Dakar SEN → supported the research journey on immaterial heritage and the Griot Culture by offering the archive

2023 Bridging Steps Residency between Dakar and Düsseldorf, tanzhaus nrw

2023 Project Grand, Landesbüro of Performing Arts NRW

2023 Research scholarship by Tanzhaus NRW

2023 DIS-TANZEN SOLO Research grand by Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Neustart Kultur → Research focusing on the traditional dances of Africa's Westcoast

2022 Residency Grand at Tanzhaus NRW → Circle cultures, how do we learn in non-hierarchical ways in street dance communities?

2021 Borderland Residency, Schloss Ringenberg

2021-2023 Ando-Future Studios scholarship

2020 Excellent Studies Grand by the Düsseldorf Academy → public-private scholarship „Deutschlandstipendium“

2020 Atelier 64 Grand by PACT Zollverein Essen → development of a pandemic living method at the center of performing arts „Sunlit portion of domestication“ with Kati Masami Menze

2020 Travel Grant of Kunstverein Düsseldorf

2014 Jean Walter Price by ZIS Foundation

WORKS selected

2026 & 2027 "the march" commission for the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

2026 "dances of intrusion" Hospitalfield Residency UK

2025 "cardiac" intervention in public space, for „Parrots and Swans“ – Ratingen West

2025 NDAJÉE CAFÉ, Space Ralations, Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf

2025 SOLO, SHIELDLESSNESS at Gemeinde Köln

2024 „Defeating Apathy“, SOTHEBY’S Cologne

2024 "Scores for Echoes of Resilience" Take a bow, Düsseldorf in public space on a 70m LED screen

2024 Echoes of Resilience – „their living sneakers“ Diploma Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

2023 "Fields of Actions" performance Malkasten, Düsseldorf

2023 "S.O.A.R." at Kunstammlungen NRW K21, Düsseldorf

2023 „Devenir Feullage“ at LRRH Gallery Düsseldorf

2021 „half body half human“ performance commission at Ellbow Room, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf

2022 „Promise you’ll come“ video installation and performance, DC Open, at Ando Future Studios Düsseldorf in collaboration with the Julia Stoschek Foundation

2021 Performance at TEATRO OUT OFF, Goethe Institut, Milano ITA

2021 SOLO "take away" Nails Project Room, Düsseldorf

2020 Performance "mind routine" <die digitale>, Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf

2020 „Parallel Entry Points“ at Arthotel Düsseldorf

2020 „Confluence“ installation at Mazzoli Gallery, Düsseldorf

2019 Atelier Closky, École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, FRA

2018 „Sea Chest“ Artistic Research Journey supported by UNESCO, exploration of working spaces onboard with the German Research Association

EDUCATION

Meisterschüler 2018-2024 Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts
Prof. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

École des Sables Senegal, Experimental Flow
with Alesandra Seutin, 2023

Design & Art Academy
Burg Giebiechenstein Halle, 2013-2018
Industrial Design & Time Based Arts

PRESS

schirnmag
museum folkwang
the dorf

I would love to hear from you. Please send me a message here:

hi@darianazarenko.co

https://www.instagram.com/daria___nazarenko/

I would love to hear from you. Please send me a message here:

hi@darianazarenko.co

Photo by Enting Zang

STATEMENT

I live and work in Düsseldorf and often in Dakar. Dance is central to my practice, and improvisation is both my method and my language. Each morning, I dance in public space to house music, surrounded by traffic, church bells, and passing bodies. This daily ritual is research, rehearsal, and invitation. I pay attention to how people respond, how movement reshapes space, and how courage builds through repetition.

My childhood was marked by migration and constant movement, from the Volga to German rivers. That experience shaped my understanding of resilience, routine, and the need to show up fully. I began improvising within hip-hop communities, where the body became a site of knowledge, resistance, and connection. Since then, I have been collecting gestures of resilience from diasporic communities through film installations, participatory performances, and public happenings.

I invite people to dance with me in public, to experiment, to step briefly into vulnerability and shared presence. These encounters are not symbolic. They are lived. The movements and exchanges I gather are later translated into physical forms such as glass books, translucent porcelain, and light boxes, where gesture becomes tangible and memory takes shape.

My work is driven by anger at global inequality, but also by hope. I see the body as both weapon and shield, archive and future. I resist passive spectatorship by drawing my audience into action, asking them to move, respond, and take part. Each invitation is a small act of defiance and care, a way of concentrating social energy and imagining what collective presence might make possible.

GRANTS AND RESIDENCIES

2026 Hospitalfield Residency UK

2025 RAW Material Company’s symposium, Condition Report 5: A Sense of Place/Displacement, Replacement, Non-Placement, DAKAR, SENEGAL → supported the research journey on immaterial heritage and the Griot Culture by offering the archive

2023 Bridging Steps Residency between Dakar and Düsseldorf, tanzhaus nrw

2023 Project Grand, Landesbüro of Performing Arts NRW

2023 Research scholarship by Tanzhaus NRW

2023 DIS-TANZEN SOLO Research grand by Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Neustart Kultur → Research focusing on the traditional dances of Africa's Westcoast

2022 Residency Grand at Tanzhaus NRW → Circle cultures, how do we learn in non-hierarchical ways in street dance communities?

2021 Borderland Residency, Schloss Ringenberg

2021-2023 Ando-Future Studios scholarship

2020 Excellent Studies Grand by the Düsseldorf Academy → public-private scholarship „Deutschlandstipendium“

2020 Atelier 64 Grand by PACT Zollverein Essen → development of a pandemic living method at the center of performing arts „Sunlit portion of domestication“ with Kati Masami Menze

2020 Travel Grant of Kunstverein Düsseldorf

2014 Jean Walter Price by ZIS Foundation

WORKS selected

2026 & 2027 "the march" commission for the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

2026 "dances of intrusion" Hospitalfield Residency UK

2025 "cardiac" intervention in public space, for „Parrots and Swans“ – Ratingen West

2025 NDAJÉE CAFÉ, Space Ralations, Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf

2025 SOLO, SHIELDLESSNESS at Gemeinde Köln

2024 „Defeating Apathy“, SOTHEBY’S Cologne

2024 "Scores for Echoes of Resilience" Take a bow, Düsseldorf in public space on a 70m LED screen

2024 Echoes of Resilience – „their living sneakers“ Diploma Kunstakademie Düsseldorf

2023 "Fields of Actions" performance Malkasten, Düsseldorf

2023 "S.O.A.R." at Kunstammlungen NRW K21, Düsseldorf

2023 „Devenir Feullage“ at LRRH Gallery Düsseldorf

2021 „half body half human“ performance commission at Ellbow Room, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf

2022 „Promise you’ll come“ video installation and performance, DC Open, at Ando Future Studios Düsseldorf in collaboration with the Julia Stoschek Foundation

2021 Performance at TEATRO OUT OFF, Goethe Institut, Milano ITA

2021 SOLO "take away" Nails Project Room, Düsseldorf

2020 Performance "mind routine" <die digitale>, Weltkunstzimmer Düsseldorf

2020 „Parallel Entry Points“ at Arthotel Düsseldorf

2020 „Confluence“ installation at Mazzoli Gallery, Düsseldorf

2019 Atelier Closky, École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, FRA

2018 „Sea Chest“ Artistic Research Journey supported by UNESCO, exploration of working spaces onboard with the German Research Association

PRESS

schirnmag
museum folkwang
the dorf

Daria Nazarenko (*1993) is moving between film stills and subcultures. By staging bodies and cameras, she highlights the hidden dynamics of social life. Sometimes hybrid dance films happen close to vitrines full of porcelain gestures and site-specific performances. Her work has been shaped by long-term engagement with Senegal since 2021, including participation in programmes at École des Sables, where she explored collaborative and non-Western approaches to performance and embodied knowledge within postcolonial contexts.

Nazarenko has developed projects in institutional and independent contexts, including Museum Folkwang (Essen), PACT Zollverein (Essen), Kunstsammlung K21 (Düsseldorf), tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf), and international presentations in Paris and Moscow. She has also realised site-specific interventions in urban and performative settings, integrating archival and oral knowledge structures into spatial installations. She studied Design and time-based arts at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design and graduated from the class of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, 2024. In the latest interdisciplinary run of the Hospitalfield Residency (UK) 2026 she examined the fluidity of class systems in between timelines and migration.