Daria Harlauta practices "mental archaeology" — a method situated at the intersection of speculative archaeology and new mysticism. Her works are not objects but artifacts excavated from the cultural stratum of perception, where ancient mythological systems collide with the language of contemporary digital and urban reality.

The raw material for this inquiry is the phenomenon of synesthesia — the artist's innate perceptual trait — as well as her years of studying the techniques of the Old Masters and fieldwork in scientific expeditions. The artist's practice is one of "creative alchemy": a labor-intensive process of translating complex, multisensory experience into material form.

This materiality is consciously constructed through a tense dialogue of opposites. In painting, this manifests in the combination of multi-layered oil technique with pastel and gold leaf; in work with texture — through the embedding of mineral pigments, textiles, and metal into the pictorial plane. In her canvases and objects, the artist pits natural materials (wood, stone, bronze) against technological ones (polymers, airbrush, mechanical engraving), creating hybrid artifacts and "time capsules". These objects exist in an "in-between world" — they simultaneously reference ancient ritual practices and the aesthetics of the Post-Anthropocene.

The aim of this method is not decorative synthesis, but the provocation of a multisensory experience and the exposure of the image's essence. The artist operates as a researcher, "dissecting" layers of meaning and material to uncover a point of equilibrium between coarse texture and fragile luminosity, between the archaic and the contemporary. The result of this process is not merely a work of art, but an invitation for the viewer to perform an act of "slow looking" and to experience a personal myth, encapsulated within a preserved moment.