In her Artist's Statement, Chati Coronel cites a meditation from the Dalai Lama as the inspiration for her paintings: “in order to generate compassion for someone, one can meditate on something ordinary that you have in common with that person. For example, you can focus on that person's fingernail.”

Hence, UnPortraits. It is the What-ness, not the Who-ness, of others that fosters compassion. These small details bear a heart-wrenching mortality that beg for tenderness. We cannot help but be so very in love with the mortal body—vulnerable and common though it may be—that serves as vessel to the sublime.

There is an absence of ego in UnPortraits. The large canvases feel physically close and intimate, yet Chati has managed to leave out the sex and circus that so much of today's art now offers to an audience bent on short-lived frissons of excitement. Instead, Chati's figures are reflective, serene, and forever.

We cannot say that we know these people, yet the very lack of information—with which to judge, to differentiate—tells us that we may know them, after all. Stark backgrounds and extreme crops signal that nothing is superfluous, nothing accidental. These are simply softly coloured love letters to humans, Being.

The eye is drawn unerringly to those areas that represent warm flesh: planes, dimples, lines where limbs meet, flex...or where skin ombres from cheek to lips...details so recognizable and affirming that, as often happens in art, a magical flip occurs and we find that we are circling ourselves. 

Words by Nat Quintos Uhing