Chelsey Luster
Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based curator, educator, and visual artist from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work explores the complexities of safe spaces in Femme, Queer and Black culture through mixed medium paintings and installations. Her current body of work, Finding Home, 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. These works showcase Black, Queer, Trans, and Femme people in a way that highlights their tenderness and vulnerability to challenge the hyper-sexualized and performative narratives often placed of these communities in mainstream media.
As a curator, her exhibitions showcase a passion for creating safe spaces for art expression in immersive art installations. Her exhibitions 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, her relationships with artists are rooted in creating long-term support, limitations of labor, and creative agency.
Awarded Grants
2023
Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)
Related grantees
Overview
Chelsey Luster is a Philadelphia-based curator, educator, and visual artist from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work explores the complexities of safe spaces in Femme, Queer and Black culture through mixed medium paintings and installations. Her current body of work, Finding Home, 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. These works showcase Black, Queer, Trans, and Femme people in a way that highlights their tenderness and vulnerability to challenge the hyper-sexualized and performative narratives often placed of these communities in mainstream media.
As a curator, her exhibitions showcase a passion for creating safe spaces for art expression in immersive art installations. Her exhibitions 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, her relationships with artists are rooted in creating long-term support, limitations of labor, and creative agency.