ARTIST BIO

Chelsea Carkeet (they/them) is a Yanyuwa artist with strong kinship ties to Gulumerridjin (Larrakia) and Wagiman Country, and has a diverse cultural background including Māori, Chinese, and English heritage. Based in Magandjin (Brisbane), their practice speculates on their ancestral narratives through an Indigenous futurist lens. Using fantastical, sci-fi inspired imagery, Carkeet reflects on Western archival traditions to re-imagine how family stories are transformed in the future.

Working with silver gelatin photographic paper, they integrate temporal drawing practices with experimental darkroom processes, particularly chemigrams. Their work challenges the framing of colonisation as fixed historical events and rejects the portrayal of colonial atrocities posed as heroic tales of settlement and adventure. As chemically unstable and anti-archival photo-objects, their artworks asserts that their cultural ancestry is dynamic and living, reflecting Indigenous space-time thinking.

They received numerous scholarships during their studies at the Queensland College of Art and Design, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Dedicated Memorial Inc. Scholarship, the Brighter Future Scholarship, and the Patience Thoms First Peoples (Honours and Postgraduate) Scholarship. Their academic excellence was also recognised by the Golden Key International Honour Society for being in the top 5% of Griffith University students.

In 2025, Carkeet was a featured artist on the projection façade of the Judith Wright Centre. Their 2024 exhibition history includes the Queensland State Archives, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, and multiple other group exhibitions.