About

Chalet Comellas, born in Tampa, Florida, lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee. Her studio practice reflects a personal connection to the complex histories surrounding the Latin Diaspora, and employs expanded forms of painting, sculpture, video, sound, and digital media to engage viewers visually and sonically. Through these experimental time-based frameworks, and the use of audio visual archives, she illuminates the interplay between materiality, spirituality, and technology.

Comellas holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Florida State University and has taught lecture-based critical writing courses focused on contemporary art and the environment along with studio arts classes, that include 2D and 3D Design, Drawing & Painting, Creative Photography, Time-Based Media Foundations, and Contemporary Art Foundations. She currently co-directs Unrequited Leisure, an artist-run curatorial project space founded in 2019 with her artistic collaborator, Clinton Sleeper. Artists selected for solo and group exhibitions at UL explore screen-based approaches to critical and topical investigations through video, code, and net-based art.

Her work has been presented at numerous museums, academic institutions, and galleries including the Albany Museum of Art, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Doral Museum of Art, University of Arizona, Colorado College, Florida A&M University, University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Laundromat Art Space, Miami, FL; InLight Richmond, Richmond, VA; LABSpace, Hillsdale, NY; EYEDRUM, Atlanta, GA; and Shoebox Projects, Los Angeles, CA. Selected group exhibitions include the Terrain Biennial 2021, Chicago, IL; ART I-10, part of P.S. Satellites: A Project of Prospect 4 New Orleans, and the Miami New Media Festival, which premiered in Florida and traveled to Venezuela, Italy, Aruba, and the Netherlands. As a collaborating artist, Comellas has been invited to exhibit at Flashpoint Gallery, Washington D.C.; Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY; and Fountain Art Fair, Miami, FL.

Comellas is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including, top prize in the Digital Media Category at ArtFields 2018. She was a Visiting Artist-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University in 2020, and as an Assistant Professor at Florida State University, she was awarded as Faculty in Residence at the Facility for Arts Research, along with receiving several grants. Her art work is in public and private collections including, Soho House Nashville, Nashville, TN; Vanderbilt University Library, Nashville TN; and Colorado College Special Collections Library, Colorado Springs, CO, and the City of Tampa Public Art Collection, Tampa, FL. Selected press includes BURNAWAY, Tampa Bay Times, Orlando Sentinel, Style Weekly, Art Spiel, Nashville Scene, and Number Inc. Magazine.