CHARACTERS

Athens, Greece

charactersascii.com

@charactersascii

characters@charactersascii.com

→ Download CV

Bio

CHARACTERS is the working alias of an artist based in Athens, Greece, whose practice engages queer memory, coded intimacy, and conceptual photography through early digital forms. Using custom Python scripts, original erotic photographs are translated into large-scale ASCII scrolls and printed on deadstock dot-matrix paper at the scale of the body. The work treats early networked visual languages not as nostalgic residue, but as material evidence of how queer presence, desire, and survival have historically moved through coded and indirect forms.

Artist Statement

CHARACTERS makes large-scale ASCII scrolls from original erotic photographs, printed on deadstock dot-matrix paper at the scale of the body. The process is exact: image to Python script to character grid to continuous-feed paper. The result is a body translated into code and made physical again.

The materials carry a specific history. ASCII and dot-matrix output are the residue of the first networked spaces where gay men built connection under pressure — where desire had to be encoded in order to travel, and identity existed as handle and symbol wherever visibility was dangerous. That history is not cited. It is performed. Drawing on a Caribbean upbringing in which these spaces remained urgent survival infrastructure rather than retro nostalgia, CHARACTERS insists on their ongoing necessity.

The anonymity is part of the same argument: name replaced by handle, body by symbol, presence reduced to managed trace. CHARACTERS works within that lineage, allowing the work to speak through what it conceals.

Selected Project

Collection 01

2025

Debut body of work translating original erotic photographs into large-scale ASCII compositions on deadstock dot-matrix paper. Developed through custom Python scripts and issued in editions of 3.

Exhibitions

Note on Anonymity

For curatorial, press, or legal purposes, full identity and documentation can be provided on request. The alias CHARACTERS is integral to the project's engagement with coded presence, latency, and queer survival.