Thomas
Chiffon Thomas, 32, takes as his found objects the ornate wood columns retrieved from demolished Colonial and Victorian-style mansions on the East Coast — “the emblems of something oppressive, something that held my family back,” he said, describing the legacy of racial discrimination. “The architecture was a symbol of all this history, a ghost of the history still very present operating in this insidious way.”
Read More“I am always thinking through social and political structures that can both disenfranchise or empower people, and seeing works by these artists help to remind me how we are all embedded in global networks of power, privilege, and oppression.”
Read MoreWhat does it mean to live in a utopia of our own design? How can opposing ideas or bodies occupy the same space, where binary qualities are bound together to create a translation of form that is whole and yet wholly singular?
Read MoreToday, April 9, Chiffon Thomas debuts their solo show at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles. Using techniques ranging across hand embroidered mixed media painting, collage, drawing, and sculpture, Thomas examines issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Identifying as a non-binary queer person of color, Thomas’ works examine the difficulties faced by defining one’s identity in contemporary society.
Read MoreChiffon Thomas is an interdisciplinary artist whose works range from mixed-media painting and collage to drawing and sculpture. The Chicago native, who identifies as a non-binary queer person with a strong religious upbringing, says their meaningful works "examine the difficulties faced by defining one's identity in contemporary society."
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Chanel Chiffon Thomas’ self-portrait, “Colossians 3:9” shows the artist as a split being. Thomas strikes a stately pose, arms akimbo, staring straight at the viewer, as if daring you to meet their eye. One half of their body is dressed in pants, while the other wears a satiny fuchsia dress, the draped fabric hanging off the canvas. Their bare chest is rendered in contrasting planes using Thomas’ signature embroidery thread. The twenty-eight-year-old artist, who identifies as queer, is constantly investigating how they want to identify and present themselves to the world. This oversized painting shown in their January solo show at Goldfinch Gallery takes that internal questioning and puts it on display.
Read MoreChanel Chiffon Thomas’s exhibition at Goldfinch, “Fractured Reality,” featured eight bold assemblages in which thick sinews of embroidery are joined with found fabric, painted canvas, and other mediums to create portraits and genre scenes. Based on her personal archive of family photographs, the works depict figures primarily engaged in mundane moments of interaction in domestic interiors: a woman barbering a young man, for instance, or a man and child sitting at a kitchen table.
Read MoreWalking into Chicago’s Goldfinch Projects gallery space, a cluster of paintings greet and orient viewers in the interior of a Black family’s home: an infant sleeping on the chest of a resting father, a smiling mother and her two children, a little Black boy and his father seated at the kitchen table
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