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A stack of pastel-colored items including guitar cases and luggage with the artist wearing a long-sleeve black dress, sitting atop of the stack
The Things We Carry I (Performance Still)
96" x 68" x 48". Found objects, durational media/performance where the Ruthless Cosmopolitan climbed the stacked bags over and over until exhausted, 2025 to 2026
The artist wears knee high black boots and a black dress, holding an orange handbag while sitting atop a stack of pastel-colored objects including luggage and guitar cases
The Things We Carry II (Performance Still)
96" x 68" x 48". Found objects, durational media/performance, 2025 to 2026
A table with a potted plant atop it, next to an upholstered gray chair, a coat rack, and other objects arranged in a white studio setting.
Set I (with Broken Terrazzo Column)
96" x 72" x 65". Found objects, vinyl, textile, boom mic stand, sculpture stand, Schefflera arboricola, seamless, plaster and mixed media sculpture, 2025 to 2026
A series of air plants lie against an orange backdrop with a gold-colored soap dispenser nearby.
Tradescantia (Video Still)
10" x 17.5", Video still from 6K video work-in-progress, 2025 to 2026
Artist wears all black, holding luggage in the air while other luggage items and guitar cases fall around her.
Errantry I (Performance Still)
72" x 72" x 60". Found objects, durational media/performance, 2025 to 2026.
Triptych of the artist on an operating table, undergoing various plastic surgeries
Under the Knife
40" x 24.5", digital photograph, 2025
Diptych of the side profile of the artist, showing a nose job enlarging her nose
After/Before (After Andy Warhol)
10.75" x 20", digital photograph, 2025
Several translucent objects hanging from a c-stand in front of sound isolation foam and a microphone. The microphone is connected to a transducer.
Kol Isha (or If energy cannot be created or destroyed, what happens when we try to silence a voice?)
96" x 107" x 60". Wood, metal, transducer, motor, microphone, seismograph, laser-cut acrylic, light, textile, ink, paper, high density foam, Masonite, 3D printed machine components, raspberry pi, amplifier, geared drive motors and controls laser-cut acrylic, light, textile, ink, paper, soundproofing foam panels, 2023
Curved glowing pink lights held together by black supports.
((( Evil Eye Echoes)))
20" x 48" x 4". Neon, glass, transformers, clear acrylic sheet, 2023
Six objects including a blue skull, orange flower, pink car, and mrore sit on display atop small pedestals.
Memento Mori
Dimensions variable. 4" x 18" x 14" as shown. Plaster, acrylic color, plexiglass, 2026
Biography

Ruthless Cosmopolitan [Chelsea Steinberg] (b. 1986, Brooklyn, NY) is a New York-based fine artist. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons School of Design, an MA in Jewish Art & Visual Culture from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and a BFA in Sculpture from SUNY Purchase College. She is an alum of LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts in New York. Her works have been exhibited domestically and internationally, as part of the Sixth Edition of the Jerusalem Biennale, at Koresh 14 Gallery in Jerusalem, Rural Contemporary in Cividate Camuna, Lombardy, Italy, at the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College, The Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, The Gallery at the Performing Arts Center at Western Connecticut State University, The Tremaine Gallery at the Hotchkiss School, and the Sheila Johnson Design Center Gallery. Her public art work consisting of an installation housed inside a 1969 Lincoln Continental was exhibited on Fifth Avenue in 2023, as part of the Parsons MFA exhibition Matter As Fallen Light. She has performed at the Bronx River Arts Center, in the DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festival, at The John L. Tishman Auditorium at The New School for Social Research, and at Unity EcoVillage in Kobina-Ansa, Ghana. Her work has been featured in ArtScope, Art New England, AJS Perspectives, The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Jewish Week, The Jerusalem Post, Exponent II, Sunstone Magazine, Lilith Magazine, and Verklempt Magazine.

Artist statement

I’m a multidisciplinary fine artist in search of a place that does not exist. My objects, installations, and performances are devised to operate as protective amulets and rituals for vulnerable individuals and communities. Drawing from art history, pop culture, current politics and reporting, and individual and collective memory, I invoke reappropriation theory, amuletic iconography, and ceremonial practices to sublimate contemporary diasporic experiences of violence. Weaponized words, images and objects become tools for protection, self-determination, compassion, and survival.  Rooted in the 1990s Brooklyn of my childhood and the Eastern European Jewish diaspora of my ancestry, I make work in search of relation, the moment when an object, gesture, or idea bridges interpersonal gaps and invites compassion. I strive for nuance in a world of binaries, how to be both/and, how to hold rage and softness in simultaneity: how to exist as a Jewess in this moment, or in an imaginary future.

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