CuratorSpace Artist Bursary #13: Damaris Athene

Damaris Athene's interdisciplinary practice explores how digital technology is altering the world around us and affecting how we interact with and perceive our own bodies. Athene works with different mediums such as painting, sculpture, performance, photography, digital collage, printmaking, and the boundaries between these mediums, to examine the flattening and perfecting of the digital world.

"My project brings these different art forms together into multi-faceted self-reflexive installations that feature padded paintings with digitally printed fabric. These paintings traverse the boundary between painting and sculpture while evoking an unnerving sense of the body. The smooth airbrushed surface tantalises, begging for your touch. Protrusions bulge underneath the soft membrane, recalling fat and folds of flesh, and sinisterly hinting at what lies beneath. The fabric features digital collages which are made by layering and distorting photographs from my 'Performative Act' series.

This series of photographs investigates the boundary of the digital and the physical by activating my padded paintings through performance in the landscape with my nude female body. I’m interested in the relationships between the female body, these corporeal sculptural forms and the landscape. Do the paintings look more or less digital when brought into the physical realm and held by a body? In my work I cross the boundaries between 2D and 3D, physical and digital, endlessly looping back on myself; my practice feeding itself like the ouroboros. Mediums are translated into one another, being distorted during every step, mirroring the constant regurgitation of imagery we are served on the internet.

I am eager to explore digital print further, incorporating it into the paintings themselves, and to experiment with making double-sided sculptural paintings that can be suspended or displayed on the floor. These works will be incorporated into an installation for a solo show in January 2022 at ] G A Z E [ Art Space, an artist run gallery in Shrewsbury, Shropshire."

You can see more of Damaris' work on CuratorSpace or connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

More news

Not another listings site

CuratorSpace isn't another listings website; it's a place where curators and organisers can use custom online forms to allow artists to apply to their opportunity. It also allows you to see and manage all submissions made to your opportunity on the website, and to contact contributors directly.