Chloe King

Lives and works in Seattle, WA, USA

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 to 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 altogether, 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...

Artwork