Artist: b chehayeb

Workplace presents b chehayeb’s first UK solo exhibition tomboy heaven.

The exhibition features 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.

b chehayeb (b. 1990, Dallas, TX) received her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2020 and her BFA in painting with studies in creative writing from the University of North Texas in 2013. chehayeb has been awarded grants and residencies from organizations including Soho House, Redbull, and the Lower East Side Printshop in New York, NY; The Studios at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA; Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT; Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency Award in Troy, NY; and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. chehayeb’s work has been featured in various publications including Town & Country, Forbes, VOGUE, The Wall Street Journal, ELLE Décor, Dallas Modern Luxury, D Magazine, Hyperallergic, Glasstire, Maake Magazine, and Hypebeast. chehayeb lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and is represented by OCHI.