CHLOÉ ROSSETTI
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Artist Statement, 9.29.2017


My name is Chloé Rossetti. I make performances, plays, films, videos, and texts that affirm life, beyond the one-way pathway of extinction afforded us by capitalism.

 

In my work I respond to the desertification that emerges from unsustainable, colonial approaches to the inseparable entities of mind, body, and earth. Harnessing my experience as a permaculturist, gender hybrid, healer, immigrant, and descendent of stregas, I manifest a vision of humanity as a regenerative presence on earth. The urgent task at hand is to decolonize; expand ecological consciousness; recognize queerness as a harbinger of change; cultivate embodied, optimistic worldbuilding; and celebrate the glory and pitfalls of our current means of communication and translation.

 

One vehicle of these tasks in my work is the recurring figure of the supposed “monster” or “changeling”: shapeshifters who adapt to life in various littoral spaces, later becoming a willing or unwilling ecological emissary to those closer to the center. On the whole, I consider “monstrous” figures to be deeply misunderstood queer icons, capable of bridging various ecosystems, and therefore better able to integrate into nature’s regenerative design. These figures are historically perceived as threats to the dominant structure of colonial rule, and as a result are often banished to the margins, plagued and cursed, and yet, like Asushunamir of Sumerian mythology, are also imbued with trauma-informed and preternatural gifts. Just as edge-dwelling species straddle two different ecosystems (a forest and a field, the ocean and the shore), living in a zone of both higher risk and higher diversity and creativity, society’s most marginalized serve as the bridge-keepers between various social structures. They/we should be followed, exalted, and looked to for wisdom and strategies of resilience and leadership in this littoral moment as we edge further into the Anthropocene.






By observing and interacting, as both inhabitant and visitor, with various littoral spaces and their denizens and neighboring ecologies, I assume the role of edgeworker myself, worldbuilding an interconnected web of mythologies that empowers, nourishes, and heals the cursed, the banished, the marginalized, and the forsaken in all of us.

 

Chloé Rossetti’s artwork has been shown in New York, Brooklyn, Cambridge MA, Tehran, Talinn, Oslo, Antonito CO, and Mukwonago WI. They have performed all over NYC and Brooklyn, and premiered original work at Dixon Place Theater. Their work has been featured in EMERGENCY INDEX and Further Affinity. They have taught, curated, guest-critiqued, and performed at BHQFU. They are a former artist-in-residence at The Shandaken Project. They have been interviewed in Adult Mag, are a staff writer at Luna Luna magazine, and have contributed writing to HuffPost, HuffPost Queer Voices, The Establishment, RENDER, artforum.com, The Brooklyn Rail, and The American Reader, as well as various artist catalogues.