ARTIST STATEMENT
I make paintings and mixed-media works that transform memory, personal experience, and cultural fragments into contemporary myths—whether I’m exploring insomnia and politics or transforming individuals into contemporary icons through portraiture. At heart, I am an expressionist. My materials and processes follow the needs of the image, moving between intuitive painting, drawing, collage, and text to create works that remain layered, painterly, and slightly unsettled. My subjects range from drag performers and dream landscapes to Palestinian iconography and archival photographs, but the work always explores the point where the intimate and theatrical meet history and inner life. Ultimately, I’m interested in how private experience becomes public myth—and how the viewer brings that myth back into their own inner life.

BIOGRAPHY
Adam Chamy (b. Fort Worth, 1987) practice spans mixed media painting, writing, and architecture - always in service of his unique otherworldly, intersectional voice. Chamy’s work has exhibited at the Philips Collection, United Nations East Gallery, Museo del Brigantaggio (Italy), and toured nationally with UNRWA USA and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza. His solo exhibition "Of Refuge, Of Home "– focused on narratives from his Palestinian-Texan heritage - was featured by WAMU/NPR and The Washington Post's Express. He received the 2023 Half-Light Press Short Story Prize for The Two Halves House, a magical-realist parable exploring national borders and family myth-making. As an architect with Cunningham Quill, Chamy has contributed to multiple AIA award-winning projects, including the adaptive reuse of the historic St. Elizabeths asylum into affordable housing.

ABOUT ADAM CHAMY