Chelsea Emuakhagbon (CV)

Chelsea lives and works within the Dallas, TX area.

While her private artistic practice involves issues surrounding representation, home, safety and social justice, her desire to find rest within the creative space has allowed her room to expand beyond her former means of privacy and towards further extending her passions by way of lifestyle, family, and product photography.

Artist Statement

I first began making as a response to the world around me. I’ve never been one to fully understand what I was seeing or experiencing if I was not making. The process of making is what pushed me to feel beyond my breaking point. It’s what eliminated the limits I’d placed upon myself. It’s what did away with the fears and performance pressures. The process holds the intimate space where the work dwells in its purest form. But the process is never enough. In a broken world, the process must move beyond its own formalities and into the hearts, minds, and lives of those outside of its place of dwelling. So expression was the reason I began making, and process is why I continued. But, humanity is why I stayed. I stayed because there are stories untold that I intend to tell. So I began to imagine the possibility of re-claiming narratives I knew to be my own though portrayed in false or deceptive ways. I re-imagined a world where black bodies of a variety of different cultural subgroups existed beyond the means of playing the role of servant, slave, or spectacle. I imagined the possibility of re-learning basic humanities in attempt to decrease societal and cultural gaps formed by an insecure and ignorant system. This is a reality our world has yet to experience: the reality of hopeful restoration.