As a first generation Guyanese-American, Amy Amalia channels the experience of displacement and alienation that can be felt throughout the diaspora and works to show the process of reconciling and healing this trauma through radical self care. Just as fire is used to turn metal to gold in alchemy, the relentless oppressive heat of society casted down on the marginalized can be used for soul alchemy.

Amalia paints the figures in her work undergoing massive unraveling of their inner psyches in order to create space for the new. Oil paint is her primary material choice for articulating this process. She uses thick vivid brushstrokes to demonstrate the stillness required in meditation as active – something that is roiling underneath the skin and rewiring DNA.