Bio
Chelsea Brant (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator, currently teaching drawing at Sheridan College in Oakville, and Independent Studio Practice at Dundas Valley School of Art in Dundas. Brant received a BFA Honors degree from the University of Guelph, and an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. She has worked for several arts organizations within administrative roles, curatorial assistantships as well as program coordination positions and has served on several arts boards, including her most recent role with Nuit Blanche YXE Festival Board of Directors. Brant’s artistic work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally with her most recent solo exhibition presented at The Studio in Saskatoon, SK.
Artist Statement
As a mixed-race Mohawk and German female oscillating between rural and city environments, my work often contemplates present moments and my sense of belonging within spaces and experiences. Working between a multidisciplinary art practice, independent curation, and education in the arts, my work reflects on and engages with these lived-experiences, vicarious recounters, intimate moments, and memory. I work with extracted image fragments from personal and found photographs and play with both reductive and collective collage approaches to compile narratives in the work I make, presenting visual moments in a sort of blended “story-quilt”. Using fragmentation and assemblage of place, time, and space within one picture plane, these artworks present the passing of time as well as themes of joy and trauma simultaneously. Visuals are often taken from old family photographs, life cycles of plants, and imagery of idyllic travel destinations, meaning the subject matter is often diverse but the throughlines between series are strewn together with shared navigations of relationships and being.
