Theresa Chromati


Theresa Chromati is an American visual artist of Guyanese descent, whose primary medias are painting and collage. She is from Baltimore, Maryland, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Background and career

Theresa Chromati, who was born in 1992, grew up in East Baltimore. She attended Wilmington's Delaware College of Art and Design, and holds a bachelor of fine arts degree in graphic design from Pratt Institute, New York, where she currently lives. Her parents nurtured a creative environment at home, and hand-painted birds in the family car themselves.

Artistic practice

Through an abstract figurative approach to painting and collage, Chromati comments on Black femininity and womanhood as key subjects for her artistry. In her work she combines using acrylic paint with industrial materials such as glitter and vinyl, in addition to organic materials such as silk, cotton and bandanas that evoke Western African textiles and patterns. Among her themes, her artworks elaborate on issues of self-representation, and female objectification in the digital world, particularly in the Me Too era. Chromati was selected by visual artist Mickalene Thomas for her curatorial project Mickalene Thomas: A Moment's Pleasure, at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the exhibition was on view between 2019 and 2022.
Her work has been featured in Vogue magazine, Architectural Digest, and the New York Times Magazine.

Critical reception

In an essay for the Studio Museum in Harlem's magazine, art critic Eric Booker comments on Chromati's practice.
"Through her genre-bending practice, Chromati's protagonists refuse to be one-dimensional. Their potential is too vibrant to be traditionally understood. Her work is an act of love and defiance."

Exhibitions

Solo shows

Chromati's work has been incorporated in notable museum and academic collections around the Americas such as
In 2020, Chromati was commissioned to paint the facade of The Delaware Contemporary in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the women's suffrage in America. Although scheduled for June 5 of that year, the public art project had its opening celebrated with a public "drive-thru" on June 19 in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and anti-police brutality protests taking place all over the country in the summer months of 2020.