Your name
Damaris Athene
Place of birth
Bristol, UK
Place where you live now
Near Bourn, Cambridgeshire, UK
3 words to describe you
Friendly, Honest, Perfectionist
Why do you take pictures?
I’m fascinated by the way the camera can distort the truth and how you can manipulate the interpretation of an image with what you put in and what you leave out.
Where do you get your inspiration?
From the lived experience of being in a female body, visiting exhibitions, anatomy & biology, trans-humanism, journal articles, books such as ‘The Powers of Horror’ by Julia Kristeva and ‘Sexuality: Documents of Contemporary Art’ edited by Amelia Jones for Whitechapel Gallery.
Who are your influences?
Rachel de Joode, Martina Menagon, Inês Norton, Kim Kei, Bora, Karla Black, Sam Gilliam, Louise Bourgeois, Cecily Brown, Vickie Vainionpää, Maisie Cousins, I could go on!!
What determines the subject matter you choose?
My work explores how digital technology is altering the world around us and affecting how we interact with and perceive our own bodies. I’m particularly interested in how this relates to female bodies and my interest comes from my lived experience and seeing how technology has changed things in my lifetime. My work since I was very young has been connected to bodies.
What impact would you like your art to have?
I would like people to question their perception of their own bodies and their relationship with technology. I hope that my work can be a starting point for discussion.
What artwork do you never get bored with?
An impossible task to pick just one artwork, but I find immersive installations captivating. For me nothing can beat having a physical experience of a work of art.
Is there anything you want to add?
Nothing to add.

Project statement

This series of photos examines the boundary of the digital and physical by activating sculptural paintings with the female body. An exploration of how digital technology is altering the world around us and affecting how we interact with each other and our own bodies.

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 digitization of female bodies and how ‘now we can digitize 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
@damaris.athene