about

Chelsea Couch (they/them) is an artist & educator and former co-executive and artistic director of Ditch Projects. Born in 1990, they received a BFA in Painting & Drawing from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an MFA in Studio Art from University of Oregon. They are currently based in Salem, OR, a transplant from Southern Appalachia.

Chelsea Couch’s work is an inventory of the anxiety felt in contemporary Western society as a marginalized individual. Their practice takes stock of these experiences and in turn creates situational space for speculation. Working across Sculpture and Performance, they explore a materials- and object-based practice and enjoy crafting work that aggregates double entendre, innuendo, and non sequitur. Mutable materials create a throughline in their practice, considering both social and geologic timelines as inspired by their experiences as a trans person. Their work leans into the human desire for material seduction, poetic beauty, and being brought in on a joke. The driving force of their research is rooted in decolonization, post-gender embodiment, safety & security as related to late-stage capitalism and the anxious reality of the Anthropocene. Humor is an important way for them to engage self-care and audience consideration by creating punctuated space for emotional release—much in the way a comedian both creates and relieves tension. Currently, they are exploring themes, materials, and objects in reference to fragile masculinity and their gendered socialization in Southern Appalachia; through research into queer flagging, the work is conflating the language of trucks and transition.