Artist statement

My work explores the intersections of memory, identity, and resilience within the African Diaspora, centering Black interiority and intergenerational storytelling. I am drawn to the space between undoing and becoming—a reflection of Black cultural expression as both survival and innovation. Through rigorous archival research, familial photographs, oral histories, and found materials, I create layered works that examine identity, relation, and the mutability of representation.

Struggling with memory—its erosion, resurfacing, and unreliability—has deeply shaped my practice. Images act as a tether, grounding my nonlinear relationship with time. A late ADHD diagnosis further informed my process: rhythmic, emotionally impermanent, embracing both structure and improvisation.

My practice evolves alongside a growing family history archive—including census records, city directories, manumission papers, oral testimonies, draft records, and regional histories of Southwest Louisiana and Southeastern Texas—which serves as both foundation and generative force.

Materially, I work with wood, fabric, paper, and oil paint, repurposing found and donated objects that carry embedded histories of labor, domesticity, and resourcefulness. Digital collages function as sites of experimentation, allowing disparate narratives to converge across time and space. At its core, my work is a meditation on how memory is carried, fragmented, and reconstructed across generations.

Bio

Chayse Sampy is a mixed media, Afro-surrealist artist from Houston, TX. She is currently a Studio Fellow at NXTHVN in New Haven, CT. 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. A graduate of Florida State University (MFA, 2023) and Louisiana State University (BFA, 2020), Sampy’s work investigates Black interiority, intergenerational memory, and cultural resilience through painting, collage, and installation. She served as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston and instructor at the Glassell School of Art in 2024. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, with recent group exhibitions at the Context Projects (2025), Lawndale Art Center (2025), Texas Biennial (2024), 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), and Nia Cultural Center (2022).