tomboy heaven

Workplace is pleased to announce b chehayeb’s first UK solo exhibition tomboy heaven.

The exhibition will feature new paintings by chehayeb, which explore the complexities of memory, identity and cultural hybridity.

chehayeb’s gestural and vibrant semi-abstract paintings attempt to reconstruct fallible memories and sensory experiences of adolescence. Born in Dallas and raised in ‘Frontier’ towns such as Abilene in the West Texan orbit of Fort Worth, chehayeb’s formative years were spent negotiating her resistance to powerful archetypes within Mexican and American culture and religion. Softball, writing, and eventually Art provided routes of escape from a seemingly inevitable conformity to heavily gendered societal norms.

Enveloped in her experience of growing up in West Texas in the early 90’s, the paintings are marked by blocks of vibrant colour - dirt red and loamy ochres mix with deep blues of Texan skies, which gather haphazardly to form vast dreamlike tableaus upon which stories and histories play out.

I paint to understand how I got here, how I learned language, and ultimately study what is permanent, and what is temporary in regards to memory.

Populated by a cast of part formed objects, stars, cowboy hats, trophies, snakes, underwear and cigarettes become protagonists that parade through the unstable territory of memory, a visual lexicon of motifs, pointing towards a fluid selfhood emerging from a place between cultures and language.