Athena Lynch
September 19th - Oct. 2nd, 2025Athena Lynch (b. 1980) is a transdisciplinary artist and community arts organizer based in Portland, Maine. Raised in East Orange, Orange, and Newark, NJ, her creative roots come from a family of makers—her mother a seamstress, her grandfather a cake decorator, and her aunt a carpenter. She is an alumnus of the historic Arts High School in Newark and holds a BFA in Sculpture from Maine College of Art & Design.
Athena’s practice encompasses installation, sculpture, video, textiles, and performance, with a focus on centering Black bodies and African diasporic narratives. Guided by the Ghanaian principle of Sankofa, her work reclaims cultural memory and challenges reductive portrayals of Blackness.
She is the founder of Sounds N Sizzle, a Black-centered food and music festival, and has organized Portland’s Juneteenth celebration since 2020. Her work has been shown at Studio Montclair Gallery (NJ), Maine College of Art & Design, and Able Baker Contemporary (ME).
Athena is co-curating SEEN ≠ HEARD with artist Candice Gosta. Her video installation Fit the Description, originally presented in Splay, is reimagined here to address racial profiling and surveillance.
She is a 2024–2025 Leaders of Color Fellow.