These pieces resemble hanging fruit or limbs. They are made from old socks of the artist that had stretched out or had holes in them.

Combining the burnt socks with images of dirt, leaves and flowers alludes to death and decay and the cycle of life. After mending the socks with the images, the artist dipped them in wax to harden them and give the images a patina that speaks to the passage of time. 

Inspired by a large, hole filled rock the he saw in Oaxaca that a local restaurant would decorate with lights, Chams wanted to replicate the sense of filling and decorating of these holes with something while also highlighting their presence. This combined with his persistent desire to immortalize a moment in human life by making the embedded socks appear as fossils that had somehow merged with the rock.

Chams seeks to merge human and geological time by creating an object that inhabits both.

The structure of the piece, the rock, represents geological time, an object created and affected by natural events. The socks represent human time, though they have been fossilized and become one with the rock.

These formerly utilitarian objects convey a sense of the past, stripped now of their use and remaining only as ruins of lives lived. The waxed cavities add a potentiality to the piece, placing it in a moment that may at any time change if conditions were to change. 

Julian took these photos while driving uphill in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. He wanted to recreate the experience of seeing a moving landscape through a car window, so the piece reads almost like a contact sheet. The Sierra is one of his favorite places in Colombia. It has a violent and complicated history involving guerrilla groups and cocaine, but it is very biodiverse and its beauty is undeniable.

The flower featured in the piece is Brugmansia suaveolens or angel’s trumpets, which contains scopolamine or devil’s breath, a substance that has been used by criminals in Colombia and around the world, who administer it to their victims since it makes them lose consciousness and their will power. This psychoactive effect has also been used for spiritual purposes in different cultures.

Chams is interested in presenting the plant and the landscape as beautiful, magical, and mysterious in their own right, regardless of the stigmas associated with them.