Amirah Chatman

“I am a multidisciplinary artist whose practice manifests through drawing, soft sculpture, and installation. The materials I favor include chalk pastel, charcoal, textile fiber, and light.
Utilizing my background in figurative art, I seek to relay my perception of Blackness, death, impermanence, and color via confrontational portraiture and abstraction to depict cloudscapes and the Black form. Placing my figures in these turbulent otherworldly environments, I juxtapose peace and rest with pain and chaos. My inspirations stem from my own lived experiences and frequent observation of the sky.

My work is produced in reverence for the people being referenced; critiquing a culture that spends so much time demonizing the features I was born with. I aim to challenge eurocentric defaults associated with the afterlife, searching for a new place among the clouds, Heaven, and angels: Somewhere Else, Somewhere Different.”

--Amirah Chatman