Chelsea Wrightson

Altars of Imperfection are bas-relief oil paintings made of poured plaster castings from my collection of disposable single-use plastics. The plaster castings are set in harmonic compositions, locked in space with a poured plaster finish. This body of work is an alchemical shift from waste to altar; at once a reflection of our reverence for single-use materials, a nod to their permanent fossilized deposits, and an imagined world beyond their use and proliferation. 

On a molecular level, plastic is one of the strongest human inventions. White supremacist patriarchy sits in direct parallel. Entire ecosystems have been organized around their existence. Entire realities of being must be reimagined. Our temples of trash and our legacies are being built into the landscape in real time, with little consideration of the lasting effects of either.

Along the way, our understanding of inter-being has been fragmented. Since the rise of colonialism, industrialism, and capitalism we have been heavily influenced by masculine systems of life: scarcity, individualism, competition, materialism, consumption. By creating this work I seek to reconcile my relationships with living beings and the giving earth. I am listening to the past and channeling new futures where feminine approaches of collaboration, sustainability, empathy, care, mindfulness, abundance, resourcefulness and reciprocity are able to flourish.