EMILY WISE
MEET ME AT THE MOTHERSHIP

PRIVATE PRICE LIST

OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2026
5-8 PM

ON VIEW
MARCH 6 - APRIL 4, 2026

FOR INQUIRES
Please contact hello@chefasprojects.com

Chefas Projects is delighted to present, Meet Me at the Mothership, a new exhibition by Portland-based artist Emily Wise. This collection expands Wise’s exploration into femininity, relational intimacy, and the symbolic dimensions of the natural world. Prompted in part by a recent trip to Utah, where vast desert terrains and geologic formations foregrounded questions of origin, endurance, and scale, Wise uses landscape as both subject and metaphor for maternal presence.

In this series, Wise develops the concept of the “Mothership” as a multivalent figure: cosmological, terrestrial, and corporeal. The term operates simultaneously as mythic archetype and contemporary psychological inquiry, invoking ideas of provision, protection, and generative capacity. Through this framework, Wise interrogates what constitutes a maternal quality, not as biological determinism, but as an affective and spatial condition shaped by care, reciprocity, and interdependence.

Female figures emerge within densely imagined, surreal flora in Wise’s paintings. Her distinctive use of fluorescent and high-chroma color destabilizes conventional associations of naturalism, producing a tension between seduction and estrangement. The luminous surfaces draw viewers inward, revealing layered narratives of interiority and collective experiences.Color becomes atmospheric and psychological, shaping spaces that hover between waking consciousness and dream logic.

The paintings articulate sacred feminine space as both physical and psychic terrain, where women appear alone and in quiet proximity, poised in contemplation, mutual recognition, and subtle solidarity. Granting presence over spectacle, Wise situates her figures as autonomous yet relational, embedded within landscapes that echo and amplify their emotional registers; flora becomes connective tissue between body and Earth. Informed by her engagement with mythology, folklore, and autobiographical memory, Wise constructs hybrid mythos that resist singular origin. These layered narratives transform the works into speculative sites of possibility, where alternative modes of being, belonging, and becoming may be imagined.

“She wakes in the dark and scrolls through TikTok half-asleep. In the glow of her screen, two golden eggs drift toward one another amongst the clouds. Calmly and inevitably, almost hypnotic. As they meet and crack, a soft, radiant light spills around her, alive and untamed. She wonders: am I the mothership?”

— Emily Wise

Born in 1988 and raised between upstate New York and Baltimore, Maryland, Emily Wise received a BFA in Painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been featured on national and international platforms including Juxtapoz and Artsy, and she has exhibited in Portland, Los Angeles, and New York. In 2024, she was named a shortlist finalist for The Hopper Prize. Wise is represented by Chefas Projects.

Through its synthesis of myth, autobiography, and speculative ecology, Meet Me at the Mothership positions the maternal as a dynamic field, one that encompasses Earth, body, and collective feminine experience, and that invites viewers to reconsider where, and with whom, generative power resides.

ARTWORK

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