Damaris Athene’s painting based practice examines how digital technology is altering the world around us and affecting how we interact with our own bodies. This flattening and perfecting is interrogated through an exploration of corporeality and abstraction of the human form. Athene takes particular interest in the digitisation of female bodies. Instagram: @damaris.athene

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This new body of work traverses the boundary between painting and sculpture with it’s abstract padded neoprene shapes evoking an unnerving sense of the body. The smooth airbrushed surface tantalises, calling you to reach out and touch it. Protrusions bulge underneath the soft membrane, recalling fat and folds of flesh. It entices yet disgusts, is beautiful yet grotesque. The abject body lurks beneath its digital surface.

Athene graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in 2015 with a BA(Hons) in Painting and was shortlisted for the Hans Brinker Painting Prize in Amsterdam in 2014 and selected for the Clyde and CO Art Award in 2015. In 2018 Athene was selected for the BEEP Painting Prize and became a Wysing Arts Centre Studio Artist. In 2019 Athene held a solo show, ‘Cheer Up Love’, at Cambridge University.

Where would you like your work to take you?

I would like to exhibit in lots of different countries and I would like to be able to live off of my practice.

If you could show your work anywhere where would it be?

I would love to show my work at Victoria Miro's main London gallery and at Tate Modern.

Is there a piece of music, album, songwriter that you think compliments your work most?

Blue Hawaii's album 'Tenderness' or something by Fourtet

What would you like people to take away from your work?

I would like people to consider the relationship they have with their own bodies and technology and their own materiality.

Can you list a couple other creatives/friends/people you look to for inspiration?

I take inspiration from so many people but the people inspiring me at this particular moment are Inês Norton, Anna Mays, BORA, Wynnie Mynerva, Karla Black, Martina Menegon, I could go on!