Damaris Athene

Latent_Space inhabits the liminal space between 2D/3D space and the digital and physical, exploring the effects of digital technology on our perception of bodily materiality. A sculptural fabric form is created, painted, and then re-flattened, leaving only an illusion of depth, an uncanny illusion that interferes with your perception. Colours smoothly blend into one another, appearing as if digitally printed. The paintings, recalling colours of the internal body or bruised skin, are encased in aluminium, evoking flayed skin or flesh in a surgical tray. The format replicates the standard 6:4 photo ratio and alludes to a phone screen.

Damaris Athene (b. 1992, UK) lives and works in London. Athene’s transdisciplinary practice explores the posthuman and how lived experience mediated through technology offers new ways of viewing the materiality and potential of the body. Her work inhabits liminal space, slipping between the real and unreal, and swimming through permeable boundaries between bodies, the organic and synthetic, the digital and physical, and 2D/3D space. Athene graduated from the Royal College of Arts with an MA in Ceramics and Glass and from City & Guilds with an MA in Fine Art.

Solo exhibitions include: All Trussed Up and Nowhere to Go, ] G A Z E [Art Space, Shrewsbury (2022); Cheer Up Love, Peterhouse, Cambridge (2019); I Shall Walk Softly There, Wigan S.T.E.A.M., Wigan (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: A Landscape of Chance, SLQS Gallery, UK (2024), In Loving Memory, Guts Gallery Project Space, London, UK (2024); Unveiling Abstractions, Hypha HQ, London, UK (2024); Robert Walters UK New Artist of the Year Award, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2023); Adjacent Colours, D Contemporary, London, UK (2023); Bodies, Gluttony and Me, Pictorum Gallery, London, UK (2023); current/s, MeetFrida at PHOTOPIA, Hamburg, Germany (2023); NOW Introducing, Studio West Gallery, London, UK (2022); BEYOND IMAGE, MeetFrida at Triennial Der Photographie, Hamburg, Germany (2022); A BODY: FIGURE AND FLESH, FLOOR_, Seoul, South Korea (2022); Our New World, ArtGirlRising x Subject Matter x FORA, London, UK (2022); Warmth, Stay Home Gallery, Paris, Tennessee, USA (2022).