Chayse Sampy’s artistic practice is currently focused on creating mixed media paintings that possess a sculptural quality, functioning as monuments, memorials, as memories. The works serve as an invitation to the family reunion, a return to community with those known to us and by the wake. They offer an opportunity to revel in not only our pain but in our resilience and beauty. Drawing from the enduring spirit of Black resistance, they incorporate a collage of images and materials that highlights the collaborative nature of Blackness across time and space. By incorporating mediums often associated with "craft," they convey a sense of resourcefulness, adaptability, and complexity that is integral to the Black experience, calling forth a tradition of fugitive creativity. As manifestation of W.E.B DuBois’ “double consciousness” these figurative pieces are monuments capturing the full scope of Black humanity, in all its dynamism and contradiction. Their narrative work seeks to understand a collective experience through the individual. Through found and archival images, they search for moments of connection in history and in the lives of their ancestors; Those moments when they reached beyond themselves and pulled us closer, begging us to remember who/what we are. Love
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The Gravity of Foolish Figures, 70x42, oil on canvas, spray paint, Momo's rosary, hair weaving thread, bandana, beads, jackets, suits, embroidery floss, T-shirt's, sequins, chain, pins, buttons, laser-engraved jeans
This piece depicts three boys nestled in the shadow of a hooded figure, wearing disfigured and fragmented jackets and suits as both physical and social insulation. The jeans they wear are laser-engraved with rap lyrics, while twisted gold chains connect their jackets to their sagging pants. The title, "The Gravity of Foolish Figure," is inspired by rapper NBA Young Boy, whose music is blamed for gun violence. The piece raises questions about the myth of the Black urban monster and the commercialization of hip-hop, while also referencing Richard Wright's depiction of Bigger Thomas in Native Son. The embroidery in the painting serves as a symbol of both violence and healing.
Searching For the Shade of My Grandmother’s Church Hat, 48x48, oil, charcoal on wood panel, beads, rhinestones, bonet, embroidery floss, asthma inhaler actuators, 2023
This painting asks the question, where do Black women go when they are tired of being strong? The piece consists of five figures, with one woman gazing directly at the viewer while the others each have a unique posture and expression.The central figure wears a black bonnet adorned with a note from my grandmother. The bonet is filled with empty inhalers actuators, referencing the link between racism and adult-onset asthma in Black women. The bonnet acts as a symbol of vulnerability, a covering worn outside as an act of defiance against societal expectations of respectable suffering and strength.The women in the painting are a chorus; on a search for contact and connection, longing to be seen and accepted. Their experiences are complex and layered, existing at the intersection of multiple oppressions. Carved into the panel is a scripture, reflecting my personal struggles with Christianity. Despite the weight of historical oppression and indoctrination brought forth in the name of religion, the Black church remains a space of liberation, communion, and revolution. The love and sense of community fostered in these spaces, is embodied in many of our grandmothers. Their vulnerability is a vital component in building true community, and healing from and by our gaze.
Started From the Bottom Now We Where?, 62x82, oil on canvas, 2023
The painting depicts a hurdler/dancer suspended in mid-air, wearing a helmet of another man's head. The piece comments on the historical efforts to limit Black people’s mobility and imaginations of what is possible. The body is leaping into a cartoonish scene from “Song of the South”, representing the degrading roles Black performers had to take on for survival. The blue community and spectators represent admiration for “Black Excellence”,grace under immense pressure; while the blue color symbolizes coolness. The violence of lynchings is transformed into structural disruptions, severing Black communities. The painting imagines the color of the sky as an effort to “tell it like it is” about the circumstances that made Black people cold, searching for warmth in the backyards of suburbia.
Otherwise Loving Beings, 48x48, oil, charcoal on canvas, toys soldiers, 2023
This piece captures a moment Black radical love and resistance based in a queer love ethic. The piece is inspired by the words of Darnell L. Moore in conversation with bell hooks, Muhammad Ali’s refusal of the Vietnam War Draft, and a Veterans Day post on Instagram honoring Black LGBTQ people who have served in the armed forces. Moore described loving another Black man as a radical act, an act of loving a reflection of yourself that you were taught to hate. Composed of multiple images ranging from a couples image of two gay Black army men and the famous image of Gordon bearing his whip lashes for the camera, I focus on themes of vulnerability, safety, pain, and the triumph of love. The men pose for a picture against a banner of stars, referencing the couple's photographs popular in the 90s, the Medals of Honor they were barred from receiving and the light of gunfire of repurposed war weapons that terrorize/d protesters. This piece interrogates the ways love disrupts the linkage between Black masculinity, patriarchy and the machinery of masculinity, which is weaponized against Black people both psychologically and physically.
Mami WAP, 62x48, oil, charcoal on canvas, embroidery, hair weaving thread, fishnet, tulle, masking tape, 2023
The title of this piece is both a play on the acronym WAP, standing for “We’re All Prostitutes” in this instance, and summons the African water deity Mami Wata. This piece questions, how do Black mothers hold it together in a country that used/s her body as the production center of capitalist exploitation. The central figure is a woman, her face determined and her posture strong, carrying a bundle of children like laundry. The background of the canvas is filled with swirling blues, evocative of the tumultuous “weather” referenced by Christina Sharpe and seas of the Middle Passage that birthed our Black status. The use of fishnets on the woman's legs suggests both a sense of sensuality and entrapment, and a means of protecting all that she holds dear. Yet, a hand emerges from the bundle of children anchoring the fishnets; this element points to the overextension of oneself that is required to not only provide for but protect one's children from a system that refuses to see their humanity.