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Barbara’s Game invites audiences into a participatory, intergenerational exploration of memory, identity, and witnessing. Rooted in a childhood game invented by Russian-born filmmaker, photographer and artist Varvara Degtiarenko in 1995 on a beach in Hampton, VA—where family and friends were asked to step into her shadow—the exhibition revisits documentation of the game originally captured by her mother, art historian Elena Lioubimova, and the artistic conversation generated by its rediscovery in 2017, including by work from her sister, photographer and graphic artist Maria Degtiarenko.

Blending photography, collage, child art, crankie, film, installation, and performance, the exhibition reanimates a dialogue first begun by a 6-year-old navigating immigration, displacement of self, and the desire to be seen. Through shifting height, scale and perspective, changing light, and participatory shadow-tracing, visitors encounter an interplay between the ephemeral and the archival—between shadows that disappear and images that endure.

It is specifically geared to be welcoming to families with children. Framing personal history as both vulnerable and generative, Barbara’s Game positions identity as an evolving practice—a game—and play as a shared language. The exhibition’s layered themes and purposeful use of various photographic mediums offers a meditation on continuity, healing, and the ways documentation can anchor and redefine the self across time.