MeetDamaris Athene

Damaris Athene’s multi-disciplinary practice examines how digital technology is altering the world around us and affecting how we interact with and perceive our own bodies. Flattening and perfecting is interrogated through an exploration of corporeality and abstraction of the human form in painting, sculpture, performance, photography, and the boundaries between these mediums. Athene takes particular interest in the digitisation of female bodies and how ‘now we can digitise our dysmorphia by virtually modifying what we dislike, creating “perfect” selves’ Coy-Dibley. Athene plays with the push and pull of seduction and disgust that Julia Kristeva speaks of in her writings on the abject, confronting our shared mortality and the notion of our bodies as pure matter. Athene is interested in how this interacts with our digital world. Does our corporeality become more abject in contrast with digital perfection? Damaris Athene graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015 with a BA(Hons) in Painting. She was shortlisted for the Hans Brinker Painting Prize in Amsterdam in 2014, for the Clyde & Co. Art Award in 2015 and in 2018 was selected for the BEEP Painting Prize. In 2019 Athene held a solo show ‘Cheer Up Love’ at Cambridge University. In 2021 so far Athene has had two solo shows ‘I Wish I Was As Hot As My Memoji’ at TOD Gallery and ‘If Only I Could Be 2D’ at Compact Contemporary. Athene founded the blog Private View where she interviews female artists.