It's All Me | 2020
STEPPING
OUT TO
STEP IN
Theresa Chromati
September 11, 2020 - January 8, 2021
OPENING EVENT:
Friday, September 11 | 5 - 8 PM
6 PM | Poetry Performance by Jasmine Combs
7 PM | Gallery Talk with artist Theresa Chromati,
Tiffany E. Barber, University of Delaware Assistant
Professor of Africana Studies and Art History,
and exhibition curator Kristen Hileman.
Deploying a palette of electrified blues, greens, and yellows alongside ripe pinks, purples, and oranges, Theresa Chromati creates beautiful storms of abstract imagery within each of her paintings. Whirling shapes are barely contained within the rectangular borders of each work. At the same time, she develops a cauldron-like sense of pictorial space by layering seething shapes and shimmering textures, including glitter and cell-like applications of viscous paint. Fragmented and fantastic human bodies emerge from these lush and turbulent compositions as the artist spins a nuanced narrative about the formation of self from her rich formal vocabulary.
Chromati’s imagery, which contemplates the path to achieving self-realization for contemporary Black women, is anchored in autobiography. The Guyanese-American artist was born in 1992 in Baltimore and grew up in that city amid a supportive community of women of color, an environment that informed her later art. Close looking at her paintings’ central figures reveals a coiled form—reminiscent of a style in which Chromati wears her own hair—crowning bodies in contorted and grasping postures. The continuity of this hairstyle, as well as vividly-depicted features such as breasts capped by nipples that seem as fierce as they are nurturing,
Reaching for My Legs | 2020
suggests that the central figures of these works are manifestations of the same being: a woman seeking stability, balance, and empowerment as the flux of life causes internal and external upheavals.
Much like Chromati the artist composes her paintings, her incarnation within the paintings composes her own body. The painted figure is an active seeker whose resources lay in part within herself. In several images, including Reaching for My Legs, 2020, this protagonist reaches for her disconnected legs: a metaphorical gesture that speaks to a conscious, personal drive to achieve grounding and autonomy. The figure is also often depicted grasping for “scrotum flowers.” Chromati repeats this motif of petaled flowers blossoming from testicular forms (a modification of the actual scrotum flower, or lady’s slipper, which is a type of orchid) as an embodiment of feminine and masculine energies interlocked in a generative balance. Her protagonist succeeds in clasping the syncretic forms as she progresses in her journey.
Another element of Chromati’s iconography are hovering eyes that flank her central figure and ward off harm with their piercing stare. The artist describes these eyes, which appear in the large-scale outdoor banners Chromati created for The Delaware Contemporary’s façade, as well as in paintings such as Stepping Towards My Darkest Bits..., 2020, as a protective guide with intuitive powers of sight who helps the protagonist along her path. The eyes are a key to the ways in which the external and internal, as well as the spiritual and psychological mix in Chromati’s work. They might represent a spiritual companion to
Stepping Towards My Darkest Bits... | 2020
Chromati’s protagonist. This spiritual counterpart could be comprised of a higher, otherworldly power or, perhaps, the collective and transcendent energies of a surrounding family or community, such as that in which Chromati was raised. On the other hand, the guarding eyes might be another manifestation of the protagonist herself, one that melds instinct, intuition, and self-possession into a shield for her physical body. The ambiguity around this imagery is cultivated by the artist, who has further noted that her paintings equally address struggles and successes in order to embrace the nuanced and ever-changing reality of navigating through life.
In addition to nuance and ambiguity, Chromati nurtures intimacy in the experience of her paintings. The varied paint-handling and waves of detail within her compositions invite (and even demand that) viewers stand close to observe every aspect of her protagonist. This figure is more than nude as she confronts the novel situation of each image. Her skin has dissolved into myriad colors bordered by pulsating contours as if to reveal interior intensities under stress, in pain, and exerting stamina and intelligence, as her being overcomes and grows. As with most acts of intimacy, Chromati has exposed what would otherwise remain unseen and unspoken to establish a profound connection with someone else. In this case, the overture of intimacy, both generous and courageous, is made to every unknown person that approaches the work. Viewers are also bathed in a soundscape of original music and abstracted sound samples, conceived by Chromati in collaboration with the electronic and Pop artist Pangelica to add another sensual layer to the paintings’ narrative.
Immersing oneself in Chromati’s imagery within the context of the United States in late 2020, might lead to a recognition of something akin to the state of one’s own interior self. The intimate poignancy of Chromati’s practice lies very much in the specificity with which she shares her own journey as a young Black woman living in the first decades of the 21st century. However, the metaphor of resilience and determination found in a dissipated body willfully pulling itself back together to heal and aspire amidst a chaotic background could offer inspiration to anyone facing the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic and divisiveness of the American socio-political landscape. Chromati’s work is too autonomous and unique to be described as simply a mirror of early 21st century experience. However, like the sparkling eyes that emanate from many of her works, it provides insight, companionship, and strength as one makes her, his, or their way forward.
Kristen Hileman
Curator-in-Residence
All images courtesy of Kravets Wehby Gallery
This program is partially funded by a grant from the Delaware Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This program is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.
