Chayse Sampy
Houston, TX
Summer 2026 * Art
Artist Statement
My practice explores Black interiority through memory, material, and intergenerational storytelling. Working primarily in mixed media, I create layered compositions that move between painting, collage, textiles, and assemblage. Drawing from family archives, genealogical research, and lived experience, I use the personal as a lens through which to consider broader histories within the African Diaspora. My family's ties to Houston, Galveston, and Southwest Louisiana anchor much of this work. Photographs, documents, oral histories, and inherited objects become points of departure rather than evidence. I am less interested in recovering a complete history than in examining how people carry history within them; through gesture, ritual, adornment, relationships, and acts of care.
Layering functions as both process and metaphor. Images accumulate, dissolve, and re-emerge, mirroring the ways memory is transmitted across generations. Materials such as textiles, paper, wood, and paint reference traditions of resourcefulness and world-building within Black communities while creating physical spaces where multiple histories can exist simultaneously. While my work often engages historical research, it is ultimately concerned with the richness of everyday Black life. I am interested in moments of rest, intimacy, pleasure, spirituality, humor, and self-determination that exist alongside histories of struggle. Through the construction of these layered worlds, I create spaces where Black life can be encountered in its complexity; not as a singular narrative, but as something expansive, relational, and continually becoming.
The artist in the studio.
Works
Furtive Movements, 19x21.5x6”, marker, acrylic, colored pencil on paper, foam board, plaster, 2025
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 jean, 2023
USS Blue, 34x40.5”, oil, pastel on oriented strand board, 2025
Captive Maternal, 72×82×6”, acrylic skins, oil, colored pencil, marker, carving on wood panel, baseboard, insulation foam, 2026
What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue?, 79x48”, oil, acrylic, deconstructed shirts, embroidery floss, beads, gold wire, lace, safety pins on unstretched canvas, 2025
Migrating the Fire Next Time, 60x84x12”, acrylic, grandmothers pillow case, fabric, jewels, cotton, embroidery floss, burlap, spray paint, acrylic skin, wood, leather, oil pastel on tarp, 2026
The artist in the studio.
About the Artist
Chayse Sampy is a mixed media, Afro-surrealist artist from 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. 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.
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