Damaris Athene London, United Kingdom
Damaris Athene’s transdiciplinary practice explores the Posthuman and the entanglement of matter, human bodies, animals, the environment and technology. Athene is currently studying MA Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School and she graduated with a BA(Hons) in Painting from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015.
Damaris Athene’s transdiciplinary practice explores the Posthuman and how lived experience mediated through technology offers new ways of viewing the materiality of the body and understanding what the body could be. Her work inhabits liminal space, slipping between the real and unreal, and swimming through the permeable boundaries of the body, the organic and synthetic, the digital and physical, and 2D/3D space. Work transmutes from painting to sculpture, performance, photography, and digital collage, accumulating in self-referential installations.
Athene’s practice mutates and evolves, feeding itself like the ouroboros and mirroring the unrelenting regurgitation of imagery on the internet. She explores “intra-actions” between meaning and matter and the entanglement of bodies. Uncanny illusions create a sublime and slippery reality, interfering with your perception. Doubling disguises duplicitously. Work folds in on itself and is kneaded into new forms. Depth is flattened and then reformed. Bodily leakage is contained, sanitised and controlled. Fluids attempt to flow but freeze and glitch. Digital flatness and perfection seduce but obstruct any sensual satisfaction.
Tactile padded paintings entice with their erotic corporeal forms, photographs question authenticity, and digital collages blur the border between the digital and physical. Glass sculptures are both liquid and solid, fragile yet strong, transparent yet impermeable. Membranes stretch, concealing what lies beneath.
Artwork
Performative Act.010, Photography, 2021
Performative Act.020, Giclée print on Hahnemüle Photo Rag, 2021
If Only I Could Be 2D.002, MDF, foam, polyester fibre, foam nuggets, neoprene and acrylic paint, 2020-21
Pixelate Me.013, MDF, foam, foam nuggets, neoprene and acrylic paint, 2021
I Wish I Was As Hot As My Memoji.006, MDF, foam, polyester fibre, foam nuggets, neoprene and acrylic paint, 2021
All Trussed Up and Nowhere to Go.008, Foam, foam nuggets, thread, polyester fibre, neoprene, acrylic paint and butcher’s twine, 2021
Segmentation Fault.015, Digital collage, 2021
Segmentation Fault.018, Digital collage, 2022
Transmute, Digital print on photographic paper & tracing paper with pastel, pins, & wall, 2022
Fruiting_Body.001, Kiln-formed glass, fabric, foam, wood, MDF, chicken wire, acrylic paint, pastel & wall, 2023
Projects and exhibitions
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All Trussed Up and Nowhere to Go08/01/2022 — 05/02/2022 A solo show at ] G A Z E [ Art Space, a vitrine gallery. An artist run project founded by Theresa Bradbury. |
] G A Z E [ Art Space, Shrewsbury, Shropshire | Details |
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If Only I Could Be 2D01/06/2021 — 22/06/2021 A miniature solo show at Compact Contemporary, a renovated dolls' house. An artist run project founded by Helen Dryden. |
Compact Contemporary, Leeds | Details |
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I Wish I Was As Hot As My Memoji08/05/2021 — 14/05/2021 A miniature solo exhibition at The Open Dresser Gallery, a renovated dresser. An artist run project founded by Sally El Dars. |
The Open Dresser Gallery, Sevenoaks, Kent | Details |