KELLY HALSETH
BIO
Kelly Halseth (she/her) is a Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang (Montreal)–based ceramic and sculptural artist whose work explores emotional complexity through materiality, metaphor, and form, grounded in personal narrative and intersectional feminist thought. She holds a BA in Sociology and a Master’s in Social Welfare, bringing an interdisciplinary lens to her practice.Halseth has exhibited in Montreal and Berlin and completed a 2024 residency at Guldagergaard – International Ceramic Research Center in Denmark. She is the recipient of the Peter N. Thomson Field School Award and the Concordia Ceramics Award of Excellence. She also co-owns Slab & Coil, a community ceramics studio in Montreal.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work inhabits intimate and vulnerable emotional landscapes, spaces shaped by longing, grief, shame, and care. Through clay, fabric, and familiar objects like furniture, I craft forms that hold these feelings, inviting quiet reflection on how personal stories ripple into shared experience. The pressures of gender and body norms weigh heavily in my practice, as I examine the hold of patriarchy and how it shapes identity, memory, and emotional expression.Recent works have explored my complex relationship with home and family, and the process of grief, weaving personal narratives into broader emotional and social terrains. I’m drawn to the tension between holding back and opening up -how relationships, emotions, and identity unfold between the walls we build and the porous spaces where feelings move freely. Rooted in the personal but reaching outward, my work becomes a space for empathy, dialogue, and the quiet, human experience of feeling.