Dom Marker

Dom Marker (b. 1990, Kharkiv) is a Ukrainian-American artist working with photography, text, video, and mixed-media installation. Born in Ukraine during the collapse of the USSR, Marker emigrated to NYC with his parents when he was three years old. In and out of institutions in his late-teens and early-twenties, Marker’s emergent artistic practice is embedded primarily in the documentary tradition and community activism, using conceptual forms to mediate the hauntological nature of static images.

Marker returned to Ukraine in early 2022, shortly after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, volunteering on humanitarian missions in frontline regions. This group exhibition marks 30 years since Marker’s family left Ukraine for New York City, as well as his personal journey back.

Mother’s Day is an enlarged photographic negative on archival photo paper, which shows a mother and son in the under-fire city of Kramatorsk, a tender moment distorted by the gun in the boy’s hand. As documentary, the image appears as an immersive record of an event, but by inverting the photograph Marker interferes with our perception via the photochemical process that produced it. Part of an ongoing series by Marker using alternative analog processes.

Thousand Yard Stare also features Untitled #30, a color Polaroid exposed in Northern Saltivka, a residential neighborhood in Kharkiv completely destroyed by Russian artillery in 2022. The Polaroid is an original artwork/physical document, bearing scratches that suggest the road it has traveled to get here. And still, there is a clash in tone between the harsh reality of the burnt-out car and the surreality of the painting piercing the windshield. Part of an ongoing series of Polaroids by Marker.

Both works record the devastating reality of war using documentary methods, while also emphasizing the illusion of photography, and art in general, implying a call to action beyond the limits of passive observation.

In the past two years, Marker’s work has been exhibited in the U.S. (Agony Books, Virginia) and Europe (CLBBerlin, Berlin; OPR Gallery, Milan), and has appeared in publications such as Nothing Left but Healing (Pomegranate Press), and To Hope (Nighted Life). His work during the NYC Pride Parade in 2021 was awarded Independent Photo’s Grand Prize, selected by Shannon Ghannam of the Magnum Photos Foundation.