Originally hailing from Walyalup/Fremantle and now based in Eora/Sydney, Chela et Cetera (aka Chelsea Wheatley), has achieved much international success as a multi-hyphenate artist and musician with singles including ‘Romanticise’, ‘Zero’ (with French tastemaker label Kitsune), and ‘Delivery’, which have now amassed over 21 million streams across platforms.
After taking time off from music to pursue her own clothing line and styling career, Chela et Cetera returned in 2023 to take Australia’s Pride Season by storm with hit single ‘Cool 2B Queer’. Closely after, Chela et Cetera followed with gritty, earworm ‘Hard 4 You’ and now, has her sights set on recording her first full-length, studio album.
Weekly, you can find her at Ace Hotel Sydney, for her curated music nights every Thursday, Dolar Rosa.
Lipstick on, camera off and poised aside her dear friend Hana, Chela et Cetera answers the line. Sitting in a van, its atmospheric rumblings cushion her voice as she begins to tease yet another creative project which she is driving towards. Formally Chela, Chela et Cetera is that boylady – touring, dancing, loving, living and just doing all around cool shit, and when I say all around, I mean it. Chelsea Wheatley, aka Chela et Cetera, is a Filipino/Australian artist, musician, songwriter, producer, and filmmaker. Originally from Fremantle, WA, she has been existing as a creative for nearly two decades moving between Eora/Sydney, Naarm/Melbourne and LA. Having taught herself Logic software at 12 years old and learning bass in her teens as part of the femme punk pop band “The Gingers” she has since performed at Coachella, SXSW and appeared on RockWiz, twice!!
Chelsea Holme aka @french___fries
In 2014, pictured in soft tone sepia polaroids donning a flat cap, she was a MySpace artist, performing alongside The Preatures, LE1F and The Presets. Now a decade later, she has had her last performance under the name she has become so known for – Chela. Having just performed her last show under the moniker, as part of the 2025 Sydney Festival Program, ‘Chela’ is the name that encapsulates over a decade of alt-pop tracks, touring supports, festival performances and good ol’ boogies. The most formative chapter of her creative evolution and one that encompassed many creative ventures including set design, djing, designing clubs, hosting club nights and an ongoing visual art career.
Chela and Chela et Cetera are iterations of a rich visual world that Chelsea has built as a creative who has a gift for imaging sound in a visual capacity. With music as the medium, Chelsea recognises the importance of lush aesthetics to execute visual narratives that weave together the tapestry of who she is as an artist. As someone “married to the material world against my will”, pleasing aesthetics are merely the display behind which a talent for embodied and authentic world-building can be found. Her musical career may be what the media recognises her for, yet much of her self-expression and identity is formed by how she presents herself to the world everyday. The practice of styling which she has refined both professionally and personally, is a source of empowerment and is a material manifestation of the currents of energy the pulse through her practice.
As someone who always dresses for herself and urges others to do the same, she has found power in dressing in a way that expresses her mood and helps her feel in control of how she is perceived. For her dressing like a ‘boylady’; “sometimes I feel like a lady, and sometimes I feel like a boy”, is a privilege as a femme queer person. She says “because I live in a safe environment where I can be queer but also masq. or femme…I love sliding up and down on that scale because I don't see myself as just one or the other. I see myself embodying both”. When you're styling for yourself you are showing others how you're navigating through the world and are trying to craft your own authentic self.
This expression through materiality is a channel for identity which can be very hard as it's constantly a state that's in flux. A daily celebration of who you are in that moment or which character you hope to step into for just one day. Some of Chela et Cetera’s references include the likes of Bowie, Chrissy Amphlett, Dennis The Menace, Prince and Grace Jones, who as she notes are “characters who have added their essence to the amalgamation that makes up my aesthetic”.
After a sidestep into the fashion world, she found herself back where she feels most at home, returning to the foreground of the music scene. Despite the unstable music industry in Australia not exactly being fertile seeding ground, Chela returned from a long stint in the US to release ‘Hard 4 You’ and ‘Cool 2B Queer’ post pandemic. The two tracks, which she thought would be her last, were written with a sense of finality yet their success proved to Chela et Cetera that music is a constant that she will continue to do as long as she can pay rent. “Hey, I'm going to grow up finally and become an accountant”, is a thought that would cross the average creative’s mind at least once a week, as we chase overdue invoices, scram through bags for rent money and kid ourselves that we can do just about any creative role – and it’s a thought that she shares.
Garth Carwardine @garth_
With the state of the music industry having become quite consumerist and content obsessed, it can be very easy to become disillusioned as you try to stay afloat. Whether to take brand deals, sell your artistry to corporate conglomerates or do what needs to be done to make ends meet, it leaves many artists at the cross-section of selling out or signing off, as the trade between integrity and cheap content is overshadowed by monetary pressure. Chela et Cetera concurs “I’d like to practise restraint and self-perseverance as an art form against the unreasonable demand for quick, cheap content. I’d like to think that true art will always prevail” but “sometimes it’s hard… I do try my best to be as ethical as possible, [and] it is a constant challenge, especially in the conditions that artists are in right now. It’s unethical to merely exist in society full stop. It’s just about choosing your compromises well”.
We're living in bonkers times and it's very easy to get disheartened with the state of the world, especially fighting to be heard in an Australian industry that has moral miles to go. Chela et Cetera is a musical space of comfort bridging the gap “for the Asian chicks…and queer people [that] still need representation” by continuing to make queer material for all those that go underrepresented. Chela et Cetera aims to “make art that younger people can look at and feel like they are being represented and feel safe”, creating a safe space dissimilar to the one she had to carve for herself.
In a time where oppressive political leaders, in particular “one one loser who magically made it to the presidency” are telling you you don’t exist, so much strength is needed to continue showing up and being present, as our natural instinct maybe to hide or cower. In the face of the far right, Chela et Cetera’s openly queer music and ethos of being “even gayer, browner, louder and more liberated than before” is a form of joy as resistance. On the swinging pendulum between nihilism and optimism, Chela et Cetera sits as a consummate optimist who encourages people to “stay steadfast and continue exploring their self expression”. Her ability to inject a little silliness amongst her projects, allows her to explore the aspects of her own identity that continue to be trivialised and project a message of hope in staying true to yourself.
Self authenticity is something Chela “wouldn't trade for anything [and] couldn’t put a price on”, as the feeling of liberation she has gained since coming out and embracing her own queer identity is the most free she has ever felt. The unshackling of her own personal boundaries has aided her artistic output allowing for her music to be “Loud and Proud”, something she herself used to shy away from. She admitted that prior to coming out to her mother, she would take a “cheeky” approach to her songwriting, omitting pronouns to make the messaging more subliminal, something at the time she thought “was kind of funny and cute but now I'm like no, no bitch that's not funny or cute, that's sad”. The internal acceptance and external admission of her queerness, finally allowing her to really be herself in her music, which as Chela et Cetera aptly deduces “is the most important thing, right?”.
This growth and self-acceptance invites a new audience that embraces her full self - both personally and musically. A friend of hers from New York noted that the inner work and pride has empowered her to “really blossom and properly embody … creativity”, a message that she transmits through her music to the wider queer community. In 2025, Chela et Cetera believes “it's more important than ever for us to all exist and…we need to all stand together and [be] louder in who we are and just exist”. Through her communal creative projects she has been able to ground herself and find home amongst a sense of family “in collaborating with people I have found a sense of community in an otherwise lonely endeavour.” From the beautiful communal attitudes of her mother’s Filipino side, she has “witnessed such an incredibly strong sense of tribe” that she hopes to continue to emulate within her own spaces, as Western culture continues to see a loss of community sensibilities. Looking to the future, Chela et Cetera continues to remain certain in the necessity of being amongst community as everything, as power is built on support and hope is the product of shared joy.
“oh my god Chela is gone?!”
She’s right here, growing into her new practice and acknowledging the community that is there and has been there the whole time. A new era of Chela et Cetera is Chelsea’s underground JLo moment. Adding ‘et Cetera’ it's something fresh, cementing everything that surrounds her and is “deeply meaningful… acknowledg[ing] all of the other energy, the collaborators and the teams who go into it”. A person is made up by who they surround themselves with and Chela et Cetera hopes there will be infinitely more of that communal essence. A band dog at heart she doesn’t “want to play anymore shows completely by myself no matter how expensive it might be”, as similar with life, music is “more worth it [when] sharing the experience with people I like”.
Music is a noun for instrumental and vocal sounds but for Chela et Cetera it is a verb; a driving force and state that will always dictate her life. Music is an obsession she will never stop coming back to.
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Credits:
Written and Interviewed by Joella Marcus (she/her)
Interviewee: Chelsea Wheatley (she/he/they/it)
Photography: Mixed Artists