Anne Athena

Anne Athena, born in Denmark 1984.

Anne Athena’s practice springs from her deep interest in human behaviour, spirituality and psychology, human beings and the stories of their lives. She strives to create narratives that open a window to the unseen worlds of the human being. These sometimes being the more dark and melancholic sides to our existence, some examples are abuse, addiction and mental health. She uses the realms of figurative, surrealism and symbolism to veil these narratives in beauty and colour. This combined with her passion for craft skill, historical art and design results in an aesthetics that is heavily influenced by traditional ceramics; pattern, ornamentation, the figure and the vessel.

Her research method is auto-ethnographic, a concept that deals with collection meaning instead of data. In her artistic practice she continuously collects symbols where she travels and through the people she meets. She turns this into her own symbolic language that is used to convey her findings into ceramic pieces. With every body of work made she adds symbols to her database. Describe in illustration and writing the symbols can be used to go deeper into interpretation of Athena´s work.

Athena’s ceramic practice is her medium wherein she can materialise her studies and contemplations. Before Anne Athena was a ceramicist, she was a painter and today she uses that skill in her making, she combines her two artistic languages, to create a three-dimensional canvas for her to tell her stories on. The four greatest influences in her life include painters, Frida Kahlo, Dali, Gustav Klimt and William Blake. Greatest contemporary ceramic influences are Kurt Weiser and Grayson Perry.