Troy
Chew

Troy Lamarr Chew II is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work moves between painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation. Shaped by the visual language of Los Angeles—from hip-hop and television to street culture and family life—his practice looks at how images shape the ways Black people are seen, remembered, and understood.

Working primarily through oil painting, Chew brings together portraiture, still life, and historical imagery. His work considers the distance between representation and lived experience: what an image can reveal, what it can distort, and what gets lost as stories move between generations and cultures.

Across projects including Slanguage, Out the Mud, and The Invisible Man, Chew explores slang, figurative language, cultural memory, and visibility. His work draws on the ways words and images can shift meaning depending on who uses them, who interprets them, and the cultural context they move through.

Chew’s work has been presented in exhibitions and is held in the collections of SFMOMA and KADIST. He lives and works in Los Angeles.