Chantal Lesley (she/her) is an Austin-based artist, a first-generation American raised on the U.S./Mexico border, and the daughter of Peruvian and German immigrants. Her work explores identity, memory, and belonging while increasingly engaging the intangible—dreams, the unconscious, and the shifting space between reality and imagination. Through photography, textiles, and sculpture, she creates spaces where the unseen and unspoken take form, drawing from inherited stories, fleeting moments, and the tension between remembering and forgetting. What began as an exploration of cultural identity has expanded into a broader investigation of liminality, absence, and the ways memory and longing shape how we connect to ourselves and others.

Lesley earned her BFA in Fine Art Photography from Texas State University in 2021, and her work has been shown nationally at institutions such as Houston Center for Photography, Touchstone Gallery, and Humble Arts Foundation. She has participated in residencies such as LATITUDE (Chicago, IL), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), Château d'Orquevaux (France), KUNSTRAUM (Brooklyn, NY), and Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, CA).

She is currently a member of ICOSA, an artist-run collective gallery in Austin, TX.

For inquiries, contact: chantallesley@gmail.com

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