Food is Culture: Deycha Nhtae

Deycha Nhtae

Artist Bio:

Seattle based visual artist, Deycha Nhtae (@deychanhtae), is a queer, Black survivor of state violence and proud product of the Ghetto. Born and raised in Southeast Washington, D.C., she unequivocally belongs to a rich history of innovation, resilience and joy. In 2017, she began developing her artistry using a self-guided curriculum in lieu of access to traditional fine arts education. Through her work in abstract figurative painting, collage and digital illustration, Deycha transmutes ancestral trauma into beautiful expressions of life. Her practice centers a radical embodiment of the process of art marking, aimed at subverting compulsory productivity. As a multidisciplinary visual artist, she explores across the gamut of wet and dry media.

Deycha is a teaching artist at Pratt Fine Art Center and sustains a career as a freelance artist. She has worked with the Seattle Art Museum to facilitate creative workshops. In 2023, she facilitated a youth art workshop concurrent with the Calder: In Motion exhibit. Returning to SAM in 2024, she facilitated two workshops in abstract bead embroidery in celebration of the 50 year retrospective of Joyce J. Scott. She was a recipient of the 2023 Seattle Restored artist grant, as well as a Neighbor Recovery Grant Recipient through the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. She placed second in the regional student art contest League for Innovation in 2022.

Deycha is inspired by the strength of Ghetto culture and the meditative qualities of abstraction.

Artist Statement:

One of my disciplines in fine art includes painting. In painting studies, we do still life observational paintings and explore color. Still life gives reverence to the mundane and encourages artists to look long and closely at seemingly inconsequential elements of their respective daily lives. Typically they feature robust fruit, plant and poignant ephemeral elements.

My abstract still life addresses a memory of the sustenance that pickled eggs and sunflower seeds provided in low income projects in Washington, D.C. This is an element of ghetto food culture that nourished me when the industrial food system and manufactured inequity left our neighborhoods desolate of whole and less processed food. It’s important to contextualize this as a rupture from our connection to land stewardship as original co-developers of the land of the US (along with the original Indigenous stewards since time immemorial). My goal is to highlight the issue while shedding beautiful, reverential light on the ways we adapted to feed ourselves well despite it all. This snack brought so much joy as a kid. As an adult, I understand the importance of this bountiful resiliency!

#ArtistsForFoodJustice: Twelve Washington artists from Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities and marginalized identities interpret our monthly Meaning of Food themes through original digital artwork, premiering on the first day of each month. Learn more about this series and the artists here.