Meet our 2026 Artist-in-Residence, Tracy Chahwan

We’re so excited to introduce our 2026 Artist-in-Residence, Tracy Chahwan! Over the course of her six-month residency, Tracy will create multiple artworks for social change with a by-and-for community funder—that's us!

Why an Artist-in-Residence at Third Wave Fund? Well, we believe art is one of the most accessible tools our movements have to move people from emotion to action. When given the space, time, and resources to create in community, artists can offer transformative ways to communicate stories, ideas, and solutions. We believe it is integral to cultivate deep-rooted and collaborative relationships with visual movement artists to ensure that our calls to action remain clear, far-reaching, and irresistible.

Make sure you're following us on Instagram and subscribed to our newsletter to see the creative projects we’re cooking up together! For now, we hope you'll read on to learn more about Tracy's creative practice, inspiration, and vision for gender justice.

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Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your art practice?

I am a Philadelphia-based visual artist from Lebanon. I began my career in Beirut, creating posters for alternative music venues and publishing comics with the collective Samandal. Since moving to the U.S. in 2020, my work has stayed rooted in a dialogue between the U.S. and the Levant. I collaborate with music labels and nightclubs internationally, and work closely with community in Philly. My practice centers collaboration, community, and connection across the places I've lived.

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Q: What is your zodiac sign, and how do you identify with it?

I identify with my sun sign, Leo. I think it’s often misunderstood as pretentious and self-absorbed, but for me it’s the sign of loyalty, generosity and abundance. We value deep and long connections to others, and shining without having to perform. I don’t know why I picture this sign as a palm tree in the sun, strong, warm, and full of nourishing dates. Maybe because I grew up in the Mediterranean.

Q: What words of advice would you give to an emerging, social justice-aligned artist?

Try to go beyond slogans or trends. These are good for posters, but in the long run, try to think: How do I connect to this cause? What point of view can I add to it? Making something deeply personal while also making it collective is something I try to impose on myself every time I want to comment on something. I want to find the place where my own experience meets something larger than myself.

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Q: What does gender justice and liberation look like to you?

The binary is always used by fascists, anywhere they might be, to justify policing others. To marginalize others, and anything outside of the center. The “center” is never as fixed or natural as it pretends to be. The danger comes when a political system presents its particular version of normality as universal and unquestionable. Gender and what is perceived as “normative” has changed and fluctuated throughout history. It evolves and goes backwards...hstory and social progress isn't linear. We must also be wary of states and dominant cultures using the excuse of being more "evolved” or progressive in that sense to justify destroying another population.

That distinction feels important to me: gender liberation has also become a tool of supremacy and we have to be wary of it. But there will always be something beyond the binary, and we will always fight for the right to exist, flourish, and imagine beyond what has been defined as “normal.”

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