The world of KROMAA

KROMAA's path is one of dizzying metamorphosis, guided by emotion. Originally from the Hérault in southern France, she began her career in the rigorous world of the notarial profession. Trained as a notary, she worked with the same intensity, the same passion and the same heart she puts into everything she does. Then life carried her to other latitudes, from Saint Martin in the Caribbean to Mauritius. It was there, immersed in new energies, that the spark was lit.

The blank canvas came to her not as a choice but as a deep need: the need to feel new emotions, to express herself and to come face to face with herself. Her first steps were an instinctive exploration: she moved through abstraction, flirted with street art, then fused the two. But it was by searching deep within herself that she finally found her true artistic signature: art conceived as a private journal, where each work becomes a part of her. A leap into the void without a safety net, far from any academic convention.

Why “Nours”? The story of this name embodies the very essence of her approach. When the time came to name her characters, the word came to KROMAA with striking certainty. She found it perfect and comforting, without really understanding why. Only later, during a simple family conversation, did she discover its true origin: it was precisely the word she used as a little girl for her childhood companions. Though conscious memory had erased this detail, instinct had kept its imprint.

This intimate anecdote echoes what lies at the heart of her art: the exploration of our identity through the lens of the past. For what are we without our memories? If we were to lose all trace of our past experiences and emotions, we would instantly cease to be the person we are today. Our entire identity rests on this architecture of memory. For KROMAA, the Nours are therefore not mere painted characters: they are a reflection of herself and the anchors of who she has become. Battered, colourful, mended, they are the silent guardians of her story, preserving innocence so that it never fades.

For KROMAA, every material is a choice. Before painting her Nours, she explored many mediums, including some she was discovering for the first time, to find those that could give substance to memory. Three emerged as essential.

Spray paint comes first. Applied as a cloud, in several colours, it sets the atmosphere of the memory. An act of freedom, it also gives the canvas a distinctive grain: no story is ever smooth.

Charcoal comes next. Through its line, every memory takes shape. She preserves all its fragility: volatile, it mirrors memory itself, which fades and changes each time we return to it.

Acrylic comes last, blending with the charcoal until the two become one. It envelops the memory, protects it and carries it through time.

On the canvas, the three materials respond to one another: colours intertwine, sometimes run, outlines overflow, and in places the charcoal remains bare, its fragility left in plain sight. And always the same commitment: to paint not what is perfect, but what is true.

From this commitment comes a signature that is at once raw and infinitely tender. This duality anchors her work in contemporary art: an art that, beyond the conceptual, reaches right into the heart.

In front of her works, each person is moved in their own way: by nostalgia, by tenderness, sometimes by the overwhelming feeling of rediscovering a forgotten fragment of oneself. Each canvas then becomes a mirror reflecting the story of whoever looks at it. An emotion offered and shared, where the artist's intimate experience suddenly becomes universal.