ABOUT
BIOGRAPHY
Chloe King (b.1999, lives and works in Seattle) is a multidisciplinary artist who works in between painting and photography. King’s work is born from her experience as a mixed-race queer womxn from a small, predominantly white town and explores notions of identity, power, and perception through vibrant and chaotic textiles, plants, and paper covered self portraiture. King will receive her BFA degree in Spring 2021 from Cornish College of the Arts, and has held residencies at ARTS at King Street Station, (2021), Specialist Gallery (2020), and Chautauqua School of Art (2020). King has also participated in a number of shows including CVA School of Art Student & Emerging Artists Exhibition, Chautauqua, NY (2020), For The Love Of Art, 9th Ave Gallery at Cornish College of the Arts (2019), Bogus Blooms at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle WA (2019), Close to Home at Joe Bar in Seattle, WA (2019), Painted Psyche at Endless Knot in Seattle, WA (2019), Living Target at Clark College Student Center in Vancouver WA, and Art Student Annual at Archer Gallery, Vancouver WA (2018).
Image depicts Chloe King sitting on a furry rug that covers stairs. King has long curly hair pulled into a pony tail and is barefooted, wearing a crop top and jeans. She is smiling at the camera as she holds a sketchbook to her chest with one hand
Artist Statement
Routine is everything to me. It holds my work together on the good days. Shoes off, don't sit, only stand so you can dance on the good songs, something hard and violent playing in my ears. All so I can tune out of the world and into the painting. taking photos is another process all together, but these days it's hard to even tell them apart. making my work often feels like I’ve found a new crush:That same nervous sweat and butterfly-stomach feeling of anticipating something new and unknown. It’s a slow, sometimes arduous process of researching, writing, sketching, shooting, printing, and painting until the piece has been resolved.
The desire to exist exclusively in this state of falling in love with creation is tempting. But, whiteness has left me grappling with my Blackness, cis men with my gender, and heteronormativity with my queerness. Growing up as a mixed Spanish, Welsh and Liberian womxn – a child of a culturally “white” mother and immigrant Liberian father – in a predominantly white, religious town, I quickly learned all the ways in which I was considered an uncategorizable “other.” I grapple with these hegemonies using images I’ve found on the internet or made myself (printed paper objects, textiles, painted backdrops) to form chaotic, intentionally misleading images and narratives. All to further complicate and question ideas of race, culture, and queerness.
As my hunger for more and more knowledge grows and my hard drive maxes out, I find myself turning towards my ever-growing community for my research. During this time of resistance, sickness, and general collapse, the ways in which we connect are as fascinating as they are anchoring for me. I’m excited by the possibilities within digital arts spaces and how my work has begun to enter into a dialogue with these ideas, due to photography’s often dominant role in social media and online exhibition spaces. My work often makes direct references to digital spaces through both technical processes such as Photoshop as well as iconographically (often taking the form of a fake, painted watermark).
I’m excited, terrified, and determined to continue learning about the vastness in perception, the circulation of imagery, and identity within my practice while engaging with notions of otherness, pastiche, post internet and my unfortunately politicized body.
My job as the artist is to fall in and out of love with ideas, thoughts, and questions.
My job as a Black artist is to fall in and out of love with ideas, thoughts, and questions.
So, I’ll continue to take my shoes off, play something loud on the speakers and create.