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 sustained inquiry 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, the exhibition situates 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.

Wise’s paintings depict female figures situated within densely imagined, surreal flora. Her distinctive use of fluorescent and high-chroma color destabilizes conventional associations of naturalism, producing a perceptual tension between seduction and estrangement. This chromatic intensity functions not merely as aesthetic strategy but as conceptual device: the luminous surfaces draw viewers inward, only to reveal 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. Bodies appear alone and in close proximity, often poised in gestures that suggest contemplation, mutual recognition, or quiet solidarity. Rather than dramatizing spectacle, Wise grants states of presence, women existing autonomously, yet relationally, within environments that echo and amplify their emotional registers. Landscape becomes an extension of the body; flora operates as symbolic connective tissue between self and Earth.

The exhibition’s narrative dimension is informed by Wise’s engagement with mythology and folklore. By interweaving references to lore with autobiographical memories, such as solitary late-night drives through unpopulated landscapes, Wise constructs hybrid mythologies that resist singular origin. These layered references enable the paintings to function as speculative sites of possibility: spaces in which women rehearse alternative modes of being, belonging, and becoming.

This vignette juxtaposes the hyper-contemporary (the illuminated phone screen) with archetypal symbolism (the egg as origin and potential), situating the maternal not as fixed identity but as unfolding question. The inquiry, am I the mothership?, reverberates throughout the exhibition, reframing maternity as an expansive, ecological, and relational force rather than a narrowly defined role.

Born in 1988 and raised between upstate New York and Baltimore, Maryland, 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

INSTALLATION IMAGES

© CHEFAS PROJECTS
Photo credit: Mario Gallucci