Work By Theresa Chromati Added To Nasher Museum ‘The Contemporary Collection’

Durham, NC – Theresa Chromati makes large-scale paintings of women of color that explore vulnerability, sexuality, and the dynamics of gender and race. The artist fills her works with colorful, distorted female figures that stretch and reach with exaggerated features and poses. Chromati’s work, tearing me apart, so much so that I become beautiful ( woman exploring a smile ), has been acquired by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University and added to the museum’s ‘The Cotemporary Collection’.

Chromati’s charged figures are often autobiographical and intended as empowered representations of the black female body. The work, tearing me apart, so much so that I become beautiful ( woman exploring a smile ), shows a highly distorted central face with smaller faces on either side that, according to the artist, are allegorical representations of her past present and future.

Since opening in 2005, the Nasher Museum has been dedicated to building a groundbreaking collection of contemporary art. In this effort, the museum recognizes and supports global artists of extraordinary vision, whose works spark opportunities for deep and thoughtful engagement. The Nasher’s collecting strategy emphasizes works by diverse artists who have been historically underrepresented, or even excluded, by mainstream arts institutions, and maintains a particular focus on artists of African descent. This strategy also includes work by emerging artists, self-taught artists, and outstanding work by artists who live in North Carolina and the South who contribute to the surrounding creative community.

As Chromati has explained, much of her recent work, including tearing me apart, so much so that I become beautiful ( woman exploring a smile ), has a surrealistic and nightmarish quality. Black femininity is depicted as a source of power that can be consumed or appropriated against a woman’s consent. Ultimately, Chromati’s works engage with issues of agency, self-representation, and survival, subjects of particular relevance in a cultural moment of the #MeToo movement, and pervasive online and media objectification of women. She recently designed three large-scale outdoor banners at The Delaware Contemporary.

Although not yet 30, Theresa Chromati (b. 1992) has garnered critical and institutional attention for figurative paintings that burst with color and texture as they deploy abstraction to explore the complex contemporary realities of black women. She was born and raised in Baltimore, Md. to a Guyanese-American family, attended Delaware College of Art and Design and the Pratt Institute and is now based in New York City. This is her first work to enter the Nasher Museum’s collection.