The Artist

About Chimba

Chiarra Hughes-Mba, known artistically as Chimba, is a contemporary intuitive artist based in Hudson, New York. Working across figurative abstraction, abstract expression, and narrative painting, Chimba creates vibrant works distinguished by bold color, expressive line, layered mark-making, movement, and symbolism.

At the heart of Chimba’s practice is an intuitive and emergent creative process. Rather than always beginning with a predetermined image, she allows the work to reveal itself as she creates. Forms, figures, faces, and symbols often present themselves through color, line, texture, and movement. Chimba responds instinctively to those discoveries, allowing the composition and its story to develop organically.

Her work explores culture, memory, identity, community, ancestry, spirituality, womanhood, and home. Some works exist primarily through abstraction and emotion, while others develop into recognizable figures and narratives. This fluidity between abstraction and representation has become an integral part of her artistic language.

Storytelling also holds an important place in Chimba's practice. In bodies of work such as I Dreamt of Home, she turns toward place and memory, reflecting on the people, neighborhoods, traditions, and everyday moments that create a sense of home.

Across each body of work, Chimba approaches the canvas as a space for discovery — where instinct, memory, emotion, and imagination meet. Beyond the canvas, Chiarra is also an author writing under the name CJ Hughes, extending her storytelling practice from visual art into literature.

Chiarra Hughes-Mba — Hudson, New York

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I don't always decide what the painting will become. Sometimes the image presents itself to me, and my job is simply to recognize it and allow it to come forward.

— Chimba