Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator’s Faculty Research Associate and Resident Artist, Dimitry Chamy, presents a provocative collection in the Washington Gallery, confronting the escalating issue of banned books and censorship. Chamy’s work is a bold response to the suppression of literature and free expression, using art to defy the silencing of voices and ideas.
The Unreading Room by Dimitry Saïd Chamy explores the pleasure and danger of reading in an age of book bans. For Chamy, books and education hold a special place. One of his ancestors, Edmond Laforest, a poet and teacher of French and mathematics, tied a Larousse Dictionary around his neck and threw himself off a bridge in Jeremie in political protest of the US invasion of Haïti. His grandmother was a rebel who threw an inkpot at a teacher who struck her in class and went on to become a teacher herself. Chamy loved reading growing up but struggled to alleviate his isolation and fear as a queer kid in pre-internet Port-au-Prince during the AIDS crisis without access to any affirming queer stories or reading materials. Later, as an artist, designer of books, and educator, Chamy fell in love with the printed page again as a material artifact he could create.
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