DVAA Member since January 2020

Chelsey Luster

Website:

https://chelseyluster.weebly.com

About:

Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based curator, visual artist and art instructor from Baltimore, Maryland. Her curated group exhibitions focus on exploring social and political concepts regarding race, gender, and sexuality. The body of visual artworks that Luster is developing is influenced by the impact that the current political climate in the United States has on black women. Lusters personal practice shapes her teaching style by her creation of a classroom that encourages and develops critical thinkers, observers of contemporary/historical art and the political movements that influenced the artists, and a students right to question the world around us. Chelsey’s mission as a creative is to design exhibitions that defy ways of thinking about the binaries of our existence, depict the complexities of her identity to form unity, community, and raise awareness, and to inspire children to be their truest selves to create a future that accepts individuality.

Artist Statement:

Chelsey’s work focuses on intimacy and vulnerability through depictions of empowered female figures in various drawing, painting, and printmaking mediums. Over the past few months she has been using bathroom scenes in her work to explore the relationship between queer black women and the bathroom with regards to privacy, trauma, and isolation while also focusing on voyeurism and the idea of growth and rebuilding. Her work acknowledges the tragedies and obstacles that burden queer black women because of the intersectionality of their gender and sexuality. While depicting these traumas, Luster renders these women in a way that glorifies them.

2020 Kathryn Pannepacker Da Vinci Fellowship Recipient:

Through the Da Vinci Fellowship program, Chelsey will curate The Life, a group exhibition that will showcase the art of queer artists of color who are creating works that question, define, and critique the idea of a safe space. Questions regarding accessibility, the complexities of the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality within these spaces, if these spaces can welcome everyone while avoiding getting taken over by the mainstream, and how to protect these spaces will all be discussed? The artists will completely transform the gallery into their version of a safe space through performance, installation, sculpture, video, sound, 2 dimensional and multimedia works. As a collective, we will create a sacred space in this gallery that stimulates all of the senses.

I am excited to work with the Da Vinci Art Alliance on this project because of our shared excitement to incorporate programming that encourages community involvement and supports the artists in the exhibition. Through this fellowship I hope to continue to expand a network of thoughtful and passionate artists and to create opportunities for them that empower and fulfill their practices while also sharing their talents and interest with others. — Chelsey Luster