About the Artist

Dimitry Saïd Chamy

Dimitry Saïd Chamy is a transdisciplinary artist, designer, and cultural producer. Working from a queer, mixed Haïtian-Lebanese immigrant perspective, he explores speculative futures, generative systems, and symbolic world-building through participatory co-creation and storytelling.

An Oolite Arts Creator Award recipient and current summer resident at Locust Projects, Chamy has exhibited from Miami to Beijing, including Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, New York, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, and Locust Projects in Miami. In 2022, he produced The BluPrnt Show, curated by Robert Chambers, with 395 artists and works spanning a 120+ year cross-section of Miami art history assembled by an all-volunteer team and covered by The New York Times. Chamy holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University.

Chamy has taught at six universities and served as an Erasmus+ Scholar and Honorary Chair at the Art Academy in Latvia. Chamy is currently a Research Associate Professor and Resident Artist at the Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator at Florida International University in Miami, where he bases his studio.

“Drawing is my meditation. I doodle and noodle in a space where flow becomes form feeding a reservoir of symbols that allow me to discover an endless expanse within. Lacan believed the unconscious was structured like a language. My work generates structures for the liminal spaces where diasporic beings use symbols and patterns as protection spells and portals to possibilities—welcoming all to participate, resist, or play.

Drawing is queering the lines between binaries and building bridges. Drawing unites Islamic tiles, scraps of fabric from my grandmother’s sewing trunk, rice and beans, painted tap-taps, tropical aquatica, the kitschy echoes of ancient regimes, a cat asleep at my side, and the movements of protest, escape, return, and renewal. Drawing is ritual, exploration, and proof of life. Drawing is how our future begins.”

— Dimitry Saïd Chamy