Today we’d like to introduce you to Chelsey Luster

Hi Chelsey, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?

My journey as an artist and curator started in elementary school. My art teacher and mother encouraged my creativity and submitted my work to various art shows around Baltimore. This experience led me to apply and attend a visual and performing arts middle and high school and eventually study art in college. After studying painting at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, I began my career as an artist and curator. As an artist, I started showing my work through open-call pop-up exhibitions and worked my way to showing in galleries and museums and attended artist residencies and fellowships to build my craft. As a curator, I began my career by cold-emailing galleries with my exhibition ideas and showing up at openings around the city to network. Over time a built network of artists and curators who I collaborated with through various exhibitions. After four years of independent projects through fellowships, artists collectives, and open calls, I began curating full-time as the Exhibition Manager at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

The road to working as a full-time curator and artist had its struggles but the art world is very welcoming in Philadelphia. While curating independently and building my career as an artist, I didn’t make any money with my practice for the first four years, I was usually losing money to fund my projects. I worked multiple full and part-time positions over these years to support myself while building these two other careers. Although I have reached a point in my career when I have more time to rest and balance my life, my path as a creative is still very busy.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

My art showcases my passion for creating safe spaces for art expression in immersive art installations highlighting the LGBTQIA+ social movement, racial justice, and feminism. I challenge the binaries of gender and social norms by confronting and dismantling monolithic beliefs about various cultures and reshaping the power dynamic between curators and artists to build a care-centered community within the Philadelphia art scene. As a curator, my relationships with artists are rooted in creating long-term support, limitations of labor, and creative agency. While prioritizing the vision and needs of my artists from the moment we meet, I curate exhibitions for my community members to see themselves reflected in the works exhibited through workshops, talks, and receptions centering Black, Queer, Trans, and Femme communities. Through collaboration with other art leaders, I share these practices and learn from my peers to contribute to a supportive art network in Philadelphia.
My artwork centers on Black, Queer, Trans, and Femme communities through mixed-media portraits, altars, transcripts, and installations. By collaborating with my models on the content of these works, working alongside various creative cohorts during the creative process, and showcasing these works through programming and interactive exhibitions, my community is intertwined with my creative process.

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?

My artistic practice has focused on two prominent bodies of work that inspired my passion for building community through art and reshaping how Black, Queer, Trans, and Femmes view safe spaces. The Finding Home series reinterprets the concept of safe spaces by creating introspective portraits with installations and mixed-media paintings that give Black, Queer, Trans, and Femme individuals the space to share what sounds, textures, memories, colors, and spaces make them feel safe. This creative process includes sharing a meal in a safe space my models select, interviews about memories and comfort, photoshoots, and collaboration during the installation of the painting. These works showcase Black, Queer, Trans, and Femme people in a way that highlights their tenderness and vulnerability to give them autonomy over their image and performative narratives often placed of these communities in mainstream media.
Before Finding Home, I exhibited photography, video, and oil paintings that explored the lack of protection Black femmes experience through voyeuristic bathroom scenes in The American Bathroom series. The American Bathroom series is a direct response to the realization that no one protects me or other Black Femmes in my community due to the intersections of our identities. While creating these works alongside my peers at various fellowships and residencies, I built a community with other artists and organizations while raising awareness. I have shared these works in exhibition receptions, gallery tours specifically for Black Femmes, film premieres, and group exhibitions to share this issue on a larger scale.
The following work samples showcase my curatorial projects and collaborations with Philadelphia-based art organizations. I have worked with IceBox Project Space, Vox Populi, Da Vinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, and William Way LGBT+ Center to create immersive exhibitions that grant our exhibiting artist agency and support them. Through collaboration with the artists, I take on and distribute the labor needed to transform the gallery while also creating financial opportunities for my artists with commissions for murals in the galleries and paying them for their programming.
By welcoming every guest that enters each event and curating programming specifically for Black, Queer, and Femmes, I create a comfortable environment for artists and visitors that center tenderness and mutual respect.

Pricing:

• Most of my merch range from $3 – $30
• Most of my painting range from $200-$5000

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chelseyluser.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelseylusterart/

Image Credits

Picture of multiple painting by me – Raul Romero
Headshot – Annabel Kiley
Black Hair exhibition – @allthings.wonderful (instagram)