A Bronx native-born in 1985, Chakima Micheau’s works have been heavily influenced by having grown up in 1990’s New York City. There in a five-story walk-up, she began drawing images that were heavily influenced by hours spent watching Nickelodeon, admiring Tinker Hatfield’s innovative designs for Nike and her Caribbean mother’s stories about “back home”. All of which came to inform her eye for shape and colors. After previously studying at FIT and eventually graduating from SVA with a BFA in illustration in 2013, she’s gone on to explore narrative pieces centering black and brown experiences that take place around parts of New York City non-natives seldom notice. The bodegas, streetwear as status symbols, the piragua man competing with Mr. Softee’s ice cream trucks, kids selling candy on the trains, life before gentrification, and so on all captured in her preferred medium acrylic and dual-tipped markers.
