Adam Chamy

Adam Chamy creates layered, expressionist works that move between national narrative and dream-like personal visions. Drawing on mystic archetypes—the truth-teller, the prophet, the outlaw—his practice blends painting, collage, and text into palimpsest-like surfaces that translate the sacred and the everyday, the theatrical and the intimate. From spare watercolors to dense, maximalist portraits, his work searches for the spaces where fable, politics, and imagination converge.

His practice spans mixed media painting, writing, and architecture – always in service of his unique otherworldly, intersectional Palestinian-American voice. Chamy’s work has exhibited at the United Nations East Gallery, Museo del Brigantaggio (Italy), and the al-Quds Gallery, and toured nationally with UNRWA USA and photojournalist Motaz Azaiza. His solo exhibition, Of Refuge, Of Home – focused on narratives from his Palestinian-Texan heritage and was featured by NPR and The Washington Post. He received the 2023 Half-Light Press Short Story Prize for The Two Halves House, a magical-realist parable exploring national borders and family myth-making. As an architect with Cunningham Quill, Chamy has contributed to multiple AIA award-winning projects, including the adaptive reuse of the historic St. Elizabeths asylum into affordable housing and Canal Window – the reimagining of a rowhouse into a investment bank along the C&O Canal.

Photo & Bio courtesy of the artist.