TWILIGHT
and other stories
AN EXHIBITION TOLD IN FIVE ACTS
WHAT WAS THAT I SAW?
WHY DID IT HAPPEN?
WAS IT A DREAM?
What does it mean to find moments of beauty for someone who struggles with sleep? Palestinian-American artist and writer Adam Chamy explores sleep and time in “Twilight and Other Stories”
As an insomniac for a decade, his works provides a window into his investigation of sleep with dreamlike mixed media works, written diary entries, and a site specific installation. His characteristic vibrant colors and expressive, contrasting tones take cues from observing the changing quality of light and color as day moves to night and waking moves to sleeping. His work uses found, often gossamer materials as well as flash fiction diaries to help decipher the often illusory moments between sleeping and awakening The resulting fantastical works invite viewers to join the artist in otherworldly dream-pop states of ecstasy or abandon.
The 20+ works are organized into visual bedtime stories. Twilight- a study of dreams; Liminal- a study of the passage of time, Echo- Memories and sleep, Apprehension- Fear of the Future. Depending on the space provided by the gallery and space provided, a site specific participatory installation may also be included to connect viewers to their own experience of sleep.
TWILIGHT - Observations of Dreams
LIMINAL - Passage of Time
ECHO - Memories of the Past
APPREHENSION - Ruminations of the Futre
DREAM TENT: Participatory installation to bring viewers into the twilight experience.
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Sometimes it’s hard to place the atmosphere right now.
Sometimes it’s hard to place the atmosphere right now.
An unsettling stillness?
An anxious calm?
Fear?
Fear yes, but also apprehension
for what may yet come.
does it also feel to you like we are all floating? floating in muffled water or air?
...a few of us are clustered together but, most of us are six feet apart...
in our own clouds.....
....till distancing ends.
The city has never felt so quiet and empty. On long evening walks through the neighborhoods of the District, I feel life. I see people.
But both are muted behind windows and masks. With the dampening effects of rain an unexpected winter chills the last month, I feel enveloped by a soft washed out silence.
When I first started this painting in early February,
I wasn’t sure why I was making what I was making yet.
I knew it was darkness.
Darkness but alive and terrible and wondrous creeping across
the horizon.
Anthropomorphic, secret, and sinister.
Flat.
All contrast.
Without nuance.
Now, deep in Coronatime.
I feel like that invisible creature is suddenly real and relevant.
Made this slowly over the winter. A line one weekend, a dab of paint or sketch a day later.
It came into focus
as if slowly waking from a dream.
Now a month under quarantine that old life feels just as soft distant & dreamlike. *
The days keep blurring together....
Morning time, or before we got there.
The movement of dim dark when, in bleary eyed sleeplessness, we witnesses the night birds awakening. It’s early dawn or late late night. Dreams mingle with reality in a magic and nightmare chorus.
It was a windy winter spring
I’ve always found comfort
in the movement
of birds.
To Another Brother the World
Distant not joyless.
Alone but connected.
We have never been able to touch the spring sky.
And yet even far away it can still bring us to life.
Is that a star in the sky?
A meteor falling to earth?
Are we opening up to something hopeful and new
or watching an impending apocalypse?
My creative works lately keep moving between
minimalism and overly layered.
'
Empty streets and crowded homes.
Silent cities and busy ethernets.
Color and Pattern and that Heavy Wind the Other Day
New Moon Time.
Coronatime.
A Neko Case Song
for Company.
The wind blew that day,
cool against the ruddy spring air.
I guess I didn’t realize
a brief second winter
was only a few weeks
away
Sending pandemic shells
to the wind.
Heady summer nights.
Drinks under the moon.
Cicadas.
The three ghosts continue to haunt the place.
We escaped them to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Fireworks.
Roof decks.
Sailboat on the Bay.
A warm
blue day.
Laotian food.
A chance encounter with a friend and her dog in Adams Morgan.
Kismet.
A sad love story separated by a plane flight and an ocean.
Turkey roaster time machines and golden bridges.
Ashes and P.O. Boxes, vases and visitations...
Time rushing forward and upwards.
anyone else feeling overwhelmed?
What's Next?
