Carmen Chami

In response to Ben Kamihira’s “Child on a Couch,” I tear apart form to challenge how we see ourselves in therapy. Through a psychoanalytic lens, this work becomes an act of rebellion — a chance to break the chains we’ve built from the scars of circumstance and the choices that have left their mark. Every painting begins on a bed of oxide red, laid down with mezza creta in a nod to the raw intensity of 17th-century Mexican Baroque. Transparency isn’t a choice — it’s the engine. I build depth through restless layers of color, forcing the light to move through the surface. Vibrancy is pushed to its breaking point with sun-thickened dammar, copal, or synthetic resins, chosen instinctively with the changing seasons.

Chami’s work has been exhibited at museums as National Mexican Art Museum, European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM), Gorman Museum of California, Mexican National History Museum, Wausau Contemporary Art Museum. Her paintings are included in important collections such as The Mexican Presidency, Historic Marines Museum, Muskegon Museum of Art, National University of Mexico, The Bennett Collection. She was the first Mexican women commissioned for the Presidential Portrait of Enrique Peña Nieto.