Silen Charlie Wellington (they/them)* is a sculptor of sound, artist of people, witch, genderqueer shapeshifter, mercurial story collector, and lover, among other things. Avidly interdisciplinary, they like to combine music with other art mediums, be that spoken word, visual art, ritual performance, loud and fiery eye contact, otherworldly and melting trysts, or something else entirely.
Their work has been performed in gardens whispering delightful fae dances to the trans-ancestors that escape definition. Their work has featured boys in dresses next to saxophones, prescription label collages amid chaotic soundscapes of dysphoria, nonbinary shadow puppets behind sheets of rainbow light, and intramuscular testosterone injections under expansive life-giving harmonics. It has screamed at the onslaught of xenophobic news, granulated recordings of politicians, and pleaded with white people to recognize the racialized violence of our culture. Silen’s art is never enough.
They have a BM in Music Composition and a BA in Psychology from University of Colorado Boulder (along with a handful of certificates and minors). They were a 2022 Bouman Fellow with the composer collective Kinds of Kings, a 2022 Boulder Arts Commission recipient, and a 2022-2023 American Opera Initiative fellow with the Kennedy Center in Washington DC for their opera What the Spirits Show, libretto by Walken Schweigert. In 2019, they were the SEAMUS Allen Strange Award recipient and during their time at CU, they won the Undergraduate Composition Award, Spark Electroacoustic award, Undergraduate Research Funding, LGBT Wolfson Writing Prize, and various scholarships. Internationally performed from Hyderabad, India to Invercargill, Aotearoa New Zealand, their work has won competitions & commissions from ensembles such as Ars Nova Singers, Denver’s Playground Ensemble, Resonance Women’s Chorus, and Phoenix: Colorado’s Trans Community Choir. They have participated in residencies and festivals such as Virginia Center for the Creative Arts & Connecticut Summerfest, and studied composition with Patricia Burge, John Drumheller, Daniel Kellogg, Carter Pann, and Nathan Hall. Silen’s piano teachers include Ash Jaeger, Patricia Burge, Doris Lehnert, and Jennifer Hayghe.
Besides music, Silen writes poetry, prose, and creative nonfiction and has received numerous prizes for their work, often weaving poetry and ritual into their performance art. They are the 2021 winner of the Paul G. Quinnett Lived Experience Essay Competition hosted by the American Association of Suicidology, and have been published in second edition of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves and the literary journal Impossible Archetype. They were also co-editor & co-steward for the first two issues of Bleeding Thunder: A Zine Exploring Genderqueer Menstruation.
Silen currently resides on Cheyenne, Arapaho, & Ute lands in what is otherwise known as Fort Collins, Colorado and works in peer support advocacy and suicide prevention for LGBTQIA+ youth. In all aspects of their life, they aim to create spaces where people feel safe to come closer to their authentic selves.
*(they/them): Silen does sometimes use he/him pronouns but 98% of the time prefers to be referred to as “they” in writing. Silen is pronounced like “silent” without a t.