ABOUT
Chloé Nina Yoshimi Selarque is a Swiss born French-American artist from the Hawaiian island of O'ahu. She is the principal artist and founder of Jahier Studio. She currently conducts a nomadic practice, travelling and establishing studio spaces on the fly. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland and raised in the Pacific, with a dual nationality and mixed ethnic background, Chloé is interested in the intersections of history and personal experience, the inheritance of ancestral stories and energy, cultural understanding and experience. She is constantly questioning her role within her homeland, cultural and ethnic identity, and navigates the (incomplete/misleading) colonial stories and values she was raised with in Hawai'i. Chloé is fascinated by nature, biology, quantum physics, energetic exchanges, spiritual authenticity, patterns, forms, fiber, and color.
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Chloé graduated with her BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design (ECUAD) in Vancouver, Canada. There, she primarily focused on a large scale oil painting practice centered around issues of ethnicity/race, colonial violence and the perpetuation of false histories while making space for truth and "other" perspectives to make their way through the fissures of time and storytelling. At the end of her degree, she found a relationship with the content of her research and textile materials. She is self-taught in embroidery but learned the basics of floor-loom weaving. This indicated the beginning of her transition to a primarily fiber based art practice.
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Transitioning from art school to "life after art school" was not smooth. Chloé found herself back in her small hometown of Kaneohe on the island of O'ahu working in a local farmer's plant nursery and then on a tropical fruit plantation. She didn't know at the time, but all these experiences would eventually inform her practice. She then found work as an assistant teacher in the high school art department at the prestigious Punahou School and was chosen to be the school's first Artist in Residence.
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Jahier Studio is now Chloé's full-time occupation and functions as a mobile retail location where she sells her work and investigations. Each embroidery begins as a drawing, sketch, or watercolor painting and then transforms into a meticulously stitched interpretation of those forms. Jahier Studio is also about community, collaboration, and providing a platform for kindred artists and personalities to come together in the aims of making safe, inclusive, interesting spaces for dialogue and exchange. Her work and style will continue to change and transform as she discovers her place within this world, as she digests the experiences of her current travels through Europe, and as she partners with others and finds her rhythm in this chaotic yet beautiful world.
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Mahalo, thank you, for your interest in Jahier Studio.
