NEW YORK, NY.- Hannah Traore Gallery is presenting It Doesn’t Have To Make Sense, an exhibition of paintings and sketchbook drawings and thoughts by the artist and author Chella Man, made from 2014 to the present. Growing up in a conservative town in central Pennsylvania, attending schools where creative expression was not prioritized, Man's first encounter with artmaking was through the pen and paper on his desk. Before Man had the language to articulate his experience of living as a disabled, queer, person of color, drawing became a fluid vocabulary that gave voice to the confusion, abstraction, intuition, identity, and self-love he was, and continues to be, in pursuit of.
From a young age, Man's drawings have always been composed in black ink bold, breathing lines that conjure connections to the Chinese calligraphy his grandfather created throughout his life. Never making a plan before embarking on a blank page, he celebrates the intimacy small-scale sketchbooks offer, encouraging his line to wander and intersect freely as he connects thoughts, figures, and shadows. That he discovers infinite possibilities for expression in the simplicity of black and white composition speaks to his ability to recognize multitudes in binary systems. For Man, the dynamic and amorphous space beyond binaries is a continuum. His line does not measure or mimic, but manifests its own course, snaking about the page with an independence that makes it impossible to comprehend where his drawing begins and ends.
Throughout his life, Man has continued to make images that speak and words that shape. Prioritizing how his work resonates personally, he refuses to succumb to external pressures to clarify his intentions or to make his work palatable to audiences with prejudiced notions of concept and technique. On every page, he evokes a catharsis that preceded the language and community he found, and surrounds himself with to this day. His is a practice that, with age and wisdom, only continues to accumulate potential future-building line by line. In meditating on his place in the continuum of gender, race, sexuality, disability, morality, and ethics, Man understands his creative practice as a generative space to envision a cultural landscape where he doesn't have to strive for what is “in between,” but, more expansively, can seek what is beyond.
In the Artist's Words
I am an artist living as a cyborg, committed to sharing growing frameworks of discarding binary beliefs. Creating visual and integrative experiences through recycled experiences and material reminds me how subjective and mutable reality can be. Having been asked my whole life to limit myself as a Deaf, trans, Chinese, and Jewish artist, my artistic practice is intentionally expansive. I'm not just a film director, a curator, actor, speaker, author, or a visual artist. From analyzing the somatic and social impact cochlear implants have had on my life through film to inviting an audience to witness my live meditation on trans-masculine pregnancy, I grieve and rejoice what a mind and body can and cannot hold. With each artistic output, my work welcomes a collective yearning for a unified sense of safety. I believe in the singular power of art to facilitate compassion and communicate experientially rather than prescriptively. It calls on us all to reprioritize empathy for one another in acknowledgement of our individualized capacities and intergenerational healing as we lean into commonalities rather than binary extremes.
How can I create a space of liberation within a culture that doesn't believe I am worthy of safety and freedom?
As a Deaf individual, my daily drawing practice taught me that the fluidity of lines can free me from the constraints of language. Within this space of safety and freedom, there was no deprivation, creating control over canvas taught me what abundance could feel like. Continuously curious, my practice has since expanded to include performance, sculpture, film, writing, and installation that address my experiences as a trans, disabled, biracial person. Currently, my research explores the hypocrisy of the medical industrial complex and how one can reclaim somatic agency over their body with ink.
A New York-based artist, director, author, curator, actor, and speaker Chella Man's work highlights the continuums and extends beyond binaries of disability, race, gender, sexuality, and morality. His identity includes being Deaf, trans, Jewish, and Chinese as well as determined, curious, and hopeful. Blending the genres of fine art, visual art, and performance, his mediums perpetually expand. Beyond organizing his show with Hannah Traore Gallery, Man is working on a live performance exploring his bodily autonomy through the lens of the medical industrial complex and tattooing for Performance Space NY and The Jewish Museum premiering May 2nd of 2024. He also works with Nike as an ambassador for disability and queer inclusion. Most recently, his short film exploring cyborgian identities was shown as a finalist in Cannes Short Film Festival, Newfest Film Festival, and more. This past month, he was awarded recognition in Forbes 30 under 30 for his work in the arts.
In the past, Man was a mentor and resident at Silver Art Projects located in The World Trade Center. He has shown at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, Powerhouse Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, Performance Space NY, Mana Contemporary, The Museum of The City of New York, The Abrons Arts Center this coming year. In 2021, Man published his first book, Continuum, with Penguin Publishing, highlighting how to heal from systemic oppression and the revelations he has come to growing up. Since leaving high school as a Junior to attend college early, he has shown in film festivals internationally, participated in numerous gallery shows and artist residencies worldwide, worked as a columnist for Condé Nast's first queer publication Them, launched a radically inclusive clothing line in collaboration with Opening Ceremony, signed as the first Deaf and trans-masculine model with IMG Models, and was cast as a superhero in Warner Brothers DC Universe film Titans. He hopes to continue pushing the boundaries of what it means to be accessible, inclusive, and equal in this world.
Hannah Traore Gallery
Chella Man: It Doesn't Have To Make Sense
February 8 - March 30, 2024
