Artist statement

Chayse Sampy’s artistic practice utilizes mixed-media to explore the temporal flexibility inherent in Afro-Diasporic experience. Her figurative narratives exist between time in a transitory space of blue coolness. She throws bodies into relation with one another, creating posthuman figures that prompt introspection into connectedness, hybridity, possibility and a multidimensional approach to being. Her pieces function as assemblages of mutating memory, facilitating a dialogue between the multiplicity of history, materials, and subjectivities. Drawing from a black visual zeitgeist of found, familial and archival images, she obsessively visualizes moments of connection that leave space for new understandings and imaginings of an ever-unfolding “now.” Operating across mediums, she collages marks, stains, images, and fabric in an effort to capture the resourcefulness, adaptability, and complexity of Black experience. intertwines the individual with the collective, providing an opportunity to reflect on all that we are and imagine all that we can be.

Bio

Chayse Sampy is a mixed media, Afro-surrealist artist based in Houston, TX. She completed artist residencies at Sanman Studios and Asia Society Texas in 2024, the same year she debuted her first solo show at Sanman Studios and is participating in the Texas Biennial. Sampy holds an MFA from Florida State University and a BFA from Louisiana State University. She currently serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston and teaches at the Glassell School of Art. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, with recent group exhibitions at Pen + Brush (2024), the FSU Museum of Fine Arts (2023), the Contemporary Art Center New Orleans (2023), ArtFields (2023), the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (2023), the Ritz Theater and Museum (2023), Nia Cultural Center (2022), and Working Method Contemporary Gallery (2022).