Dana Bote (b. 1994) is a Filipino artist based in Antipolo, Philippines. Her work investigates the quiet surrealism of inhabiting a human body, often centering on the dissonance between physical familiarity and emotional estrangement. Through a language of repetition, abstraction, and visual metaphor, she explores how the body becomes both vessel and puzzle—recognizable yet estranged, tender yet uncanny.

Drawing from personal experiences and the subtle distortions of daily life, Bote’s practice often begins with the anthropomorphization of mundane objects or a spontaneous attraction to certain color pairings. From these intuitive origins, her compositions evolve organically, guided by small details, oblique humor, and symbolic references to Filipino culture.

A key influence in her visual perspective is her blurred left eye—a condition that gently shapes how she perceives depth, focus, and form. This unique visual lens translates into her paintings as a soft distortion, an ever-present invitation to reconsider clarity, completeness, and what it means to truly “see.”

Bote’s works are intimate in scale and spirit, evoking a space where ambiguity is not a problem to be solved but a feeling to be held. In embracing the off-kilter, the unfinished, and the strange, she offers viewers a way to engage with their own inner thresholds—those moments when identity slips, humor flickers, and the world feels slightly sideways.

Her practice is an ongoing negotiation between control and surrender, personal imprint and shared resonance.