ABOUT
Clown Chakra is an intuitive adornment practice comprised of one of a kind jewelry and wearables, founded and created by New Orleans artist Keke Bethune.
Its central ambition is to both signal and extend an invitation toward the discovery that made it possible: agency. In particular, the ways agency and free will can be explored and experimented with through the straightforward act of choosing what we carry on our very bodies.
Working across jewelry, wearable sculpture, and material experiment, Keke creates objects that move between talisman, ornament, declaration, and proposition.
Each piece is informed by her lifelong study and adoration of the history of adornment, esoteric lore, archetypal symbolism, cultural synchronicity, and conceptual fashion. The work also reflects her personal path toward wholeness, in which unlearning and returning to simple observation of matter, before inherited meaning is imposed upon it, have become central.
Clown Chakra seeks to make tangible the liberation inherent in fresh-eyed reconsideration: the moment a fixed condition reveals an opening, an inherited meaning loosens, and one apparent choice becomes several. The work lives in that sudden expansion, in the delight of discovering that there is more room to move than we might have been led to believe.
Adornment offers a direct way to practice that discovery. What we place on our bodies is a small but powerful act of self-authorship: a way of choosing differently, evolving our presentation to reflect our own internal shifts, making ourselves visible, and testing the edges of what is possible.
Keke Bethune is a New Orleans multidisciplinary artist working across jewelry, wearable sculpture, and material experiment. Along with wearables, her ever-evolving practice has included costume, painting, sculpture, and home decor.
She studied Visual Arts at Loyola University New Orleans and has a professional background spanning personal styling, retail management and buying, alterations management, costume and set design, production design, graphic design, and sustained engagement with designer fashion and construction.
Her relationship with jewelry making began under the constraints of a strict school uniform, where jewelry became one of the few available means of self-expression. This early discovery of what could be altered within what appeared fixed continues to inform her work.
In 2012, Keke founded her first jewelry line, Times Deux. Her work was carried by independent retailers in Louisiana and Palm Beach and appeared in Bang & Olufsen Magazine, worn by Solange Knowles.
In 2020, in an overhaul of her personal and professional life, Keke put a pause in offering her creative work for sale while continuing to make and develop her practice privately. She founded Clown Chakra in 2026, bringing together her experience in fashion, lifelong study of adornment, and evolving inquiry into agency, personal freedom, symbolism, and the possibilities of objects worn on the body.
