Samantha Nye is a Philadelphia-based painter, video, and installation artist whose work highlights aging bodies and creates space for intergenerational dialogue around sexuality, pleasure, and community. Through lush, saturated paintings and immersive video installations, she reimagines mid-century pop culture with a queer lens - casting her mother, grandmother, and their lifelong friends in scenes of intimacy, leisure, and care. Drawing from sources like Slim Aarons’s 1970s photography and Scopitone films, Nye stages utopian alternatives to visual cultures shaped by youth, consumerism, and heteronormativity. Her work challenges ageism and expands who is seen as desiring, vibrant, and worthy of visibility.
She is represented by Candice Madey Gallery in New York City, and her large-scale video installations and paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Het HEM and Het Nieuwe Muntgebouw (Netherlands), Post Territory Ujeongguk (Seoul), Guts Gallery (London), Ryan Lee Gallery (New York), and Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston). Her work draws critical attention across both art and cultural discourse, with features in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Art News, Vogue Brazil, and Dazed, as well as international publications such as De Volkskrant, Metropolis M, Trouw, and Het Parool. In 2021, her solo video exhibition My Heart’s In A Whirl at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was covered by The Boston Globe, BOMB Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail.
