Who is Chelsea Lee?

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Who is Chelsea Lee? *

Chelsea Lee is an artist currently living in Richmond, Virginia. Lee earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2017, where she received a graduate assistantship for three semesters. She was born in Bismarck, North Dakota, and grew up in an artist’s home. She graduated with a BFA from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 2010. Lee’s work has been exhibited in the InLight exhibition with 1708 Gallery and Alma’s Gallery and Shop in Richmond, Virginia, the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She currently teaches art at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Martha Washington, and Brightpoint Community College.

who is chelsea lee

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who is chelsea lee _

Chelsea Lee is…

Interdisciplinary artist Chelsea Lee explores the contentious relationship we have with pop culture. Lee translates images of pop icons, cosmetic accessories, and technological/communication tools into mixed media sculptures that blend analogue materials, such as textiles and ceramics, with digital media.
Embedded in Lee’s work is a personal understanding of the addictive quality of Internet culture. Lee’s dedication to pop culture is driven by a desire to believe that these pop icons offer something real to believe in. In this way, Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian, and Anderson Cooper become new deities to worship and their contributions to pop culture offer the religion that might help us to transcend our ordinariness. Is there an amount of beauty, wealth and fame that allows a person to feel safe from the pain of feeling less than? Lee creates performances and sculptures that probe the highly edited beauty and sexuality presented on the Internet, pushing the boundaries of what is good/desirable in search of what lies underneath the perfectly edited public persona.

What's Good?

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What's Good? 〰️

what’s

good?

I'm the kind of person who accidentally stays up till 3 in the morning, my face washed with the sickly blue light, knowing I can't tell anyone about this. It's not good. It's not good to find yourself addicted to the internet. Wasting time absentmindedly scrolling through content, the dopamine hit from something new, some culture to be into, a new selfie of my favorite celebrities.

It's not good.

It's nothing to be proud of.

I make art in dedication to the things I want to believe in. I want to think that the time I spend scrolling the internet isn't wholly harmful.

Since 2013 I've gotten irrationally angry at people who don't like Miley Cyrus (bangers 4 lyfe).

It's not a good reaction, but I'm tired of feeling ashamed of what I'm a fan of. I'm tired of pretending that there is a good popular culture and bad popular culture. I'm tired of the misconception that there is only one way to be an intellectual, that there was ever good content, to begin with.

If I believe enough, I might make the things I believe in truth.

I think it's going to be good this time.