Chiffon Thomas (b. 1991, Chicago, IL)
Chiffon Thomas is a multidisciplinary artist whose work weaves together sculpture, embroidery, collage, drawing, and installation to probe identity, embodiment, and transformation. His assemblages often incorporate architectural fragments, cast body parts, and found materials to articulate what he terms “impossible bodies”—hybrid forms that unsettle conventional binaries of flesh and structure, memory and myth, trauma and repair. In his practice, the tactile language of stitch, casting, and material patina functions as both archive and alchemy, mediating histories of intimacy, rupture, and reclamation.
Thomas received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2014) and his MFA in Painting from Yale University (2020). He has been in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (2018) and Fountainhead Residency (2020). In 2022, he was awarded a Joan Mitchell Fellowship.
His solo exhibitions include Staircase to the Rose Window (P.P.O.W, New York, 2022), The Cavernous (Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, 2023), Ribbon Sharp (Perrotin, Paris, 2024), and Progeny (Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024). He has also shown in group exhibitions including Made in L.A. (Hammer Museum, 2023), and at venues such as ICA Miami, Leslie-Lohman Museum, SculptureCenter, and others.
Thomas’s work is held in public and private collections including the Hammer Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Currier Museum of Art, and X Museum in Beijing. He lives and works in Inglewood, CA.