Chelsea Lehmann

This work is part of Curatorial+Co.'s 2026 group exhibition, 'The Beast In Me'.

Of all the internal mechanisms that drive us, perhaps the most primordial is the beast. We expel the animal, the bodily, the base in favour of the intellect, yet it is the beast that holds what is most irreducibly human—impulses and desires that precede thought: love, rage, care, protection, connection. The very thing we suppress is also the thing that touches what is most vital.

Chelsea Lehmann's 'Spring Rites' draws loosely on the myth of Leda and the Swan, exploring themes of transformation and embodiment. Suspended between emergence and dissolution, the work inhabits an ambiguous space where human and animal forms intersect, and where vulnerability and unease coexist.