"These surfaces are alive, they transform, reject, accept and surrender, as do I. A duet in the act of becoming."
Drawing on notions of expanded painting and experimental photography, Danka's paintings honour "the physics of painting and the chemistry of photography" formulating a process that is cameraless and requires the manipulation of paint infused surfaces rather than traditionally applying paint onto canvas. Danka's materials are inherently ephemeral: light, water, air, earth, and gravity act as co-creators, shifting densities and tonalities in real time as unfolding events. Elements capable of sustaining life in balance but destructive in excess. Each painting becomes a site of tension, her interventions halt reactions at the edge of obliteration, a precarious act of preservation. The practice is a meditation on resilience, on how we endure, adapt, and persist in the face of inevitable change. This is evident in the scars, scratches and excavations across the painted surfaces.
Demi Danka (b.1996) is a British artist and a recipient of the Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship at the Royal College of Art 2024/25 (MA). Danka holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Lancaster University, UK (2016–18), and was awarded The Deans Prize in 2018. Danka has since been shortlisted for the Royal College of Art and Jaguar Award (2025) and selected for the Travers Smith Art Award Programme, London, UK (2025–26), among other distinctions. In recent years, her work has been exhibited in London, UK and Miami, US with Chilli Gallery. The artist also took part in multiple group shows including at Hockney Gallery, Somerset House as part of Volans London Climate Week and at the Upper Gulbenkian Gallery, London UK and was included in ‘Parrhesia’, an exhibition selected by Marisa Bellani, with support from Roman Road and the Royal College of Art.
-
Parenchymal Chamber
