Launch: Wednesday 12 November 6–8PM

Who I Am: Unapologetically Me shows us how the artist, Chelle Destefano, has been delving deep into memory after retrospection on growing up Deaf, in a fairly isolated area of Victoria in the 1980s through the 1990s. Society as it was still in the old 1900s societal ideals of who we should be, how we should be. Chelle knew that wasn’t right, she needed to be herself and would grow up to rebel against those outdated ideals. She has been creating paintings and drawings of childhood memories that comment on being herself and she encourages everyone to embrace who they want to be, not what society wants them to be.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Chelle Destefano is a Deaf multidisciplinary artist working in drawing, painting and printmaking. Her works currently centre around memory and identity exploring childhood memories and her inner-child which is an important part of her identity. Chelle has been a finalist in many art prizes including the Wyndham Art Prize, Nillumbik Art Prize, Castlemaine’s Print Prize, Kedumba Drawing Prize, Lake Art Prize. She was a winner of the Lake Art Prize in 2020 and more recently the Nillumbik Prize this year.

Image credit: Chelle Destefano, One Minute Before She Left, Gouache on canvas, 101x77cm. Courtesy of the artist Chelle Destefano