“my fave pyjama set”

BY CHLOE JEAN (SHE/HER)

Instagram: @ink.cj AND @picklepinee Tiktok: @lifethroughcj

Chloe Jean is an artist that was originally Wollongong based, operating on Dharawal land but has recently moved to Sydney, Australia! Her art delves into the intricacy of contrast and memory, primarily using ink as her medium of expression. The starkness of black and white has long captivated her, allowing for a raw, unfiltered exploration of form and shadow. Recently, she has ventured into the realm of color, seeking to infuse her pieces with a new layer of emotional depth and vibrancy. Drawing inspiration from the Victorian Gothic aesthetic, Jean’s art often embodies a sense of haunting beauty and melancholic elegance while including references to her queer identity.

TELL US ABOUT THIS PIECE:

There’s something sacred in those quiet, everyday gestures between me and my lover. That kind of softness the instinct to take care, to hold each other gently has always felt like the heart of what being in love with another means to me. It’s tender and grounded. It’s safe. The pinks in the shirt are warm and loud in the best way, full of joy and enveloped by my femininity. The hands are greyed out and simple, almost ghostlike. To me, this memory lives more in feeling than in detail. I remember the warmth, not the faces. For me, moments like this are everything. So much of our love is politicised or erased, but this painting is a small refusal and a way to say that our love is soft, it’s real, and it matters. Even in the smallest acts.

Being a lesbian is not just something about who I love, it’s something about how I see, how I feel, how I move through the world. My art is deeply tied to that. There’s a softness to queer love that I try to hold in every piece I make. A kind of quiet resistance. A gentleness that, for me, is political. Because so often, lesbian identity is misunderstood, erased, or flattened into stereotypes which can be over sexualised and tragic.

But the reality is so much more complex. So much more beautiful. My work often centers intimacy, not always in the obvious ways, but in the little things like hands brushing, clothes being buttoned, quiet moments of care and recognition.

These are the gestures that feel the most sacred to me. The most us. Art has become a way for me to reclaim space for that kind of tenderness. To show queer love as nurturing, soft, joyful and full of feeling, full of presence.

It’s about choosing to see beauty in the everyday and making that visible to others.

There’s healing in that, for me.

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