For Zac Chambers, creativity has always been shaped by movement. Travelling and learning the ways of new places, cultures, and people. As the winner of the House of Somos x Madre Unknown Roads residency,  his time in Santa Teresa became an extension of that practice.

Set against salt air, late nights, and plenty of pipa fria, House of Somos offered a departure from Zac’s routine in Brooklyn, New York. Somos became a space of expansion, where Zac’s instinct to document, paint, and connect with locals found new momentum. The result was not only an expansive body of work, but the kind of creative awakening that only occurs when you step into the unknown. We asked Zac a few questions about his experience, and our friends at House of Somos captured his time there.

Florida raised me sunburnt and curious. Central Florida is a collision. Southern country on one side, Puerto Rican culture on the other. I moved between them without thinking. One night mofongo and arroz con habichuelas. Another night bbq. Some days throwing hay bales in the heat. Others learning salsa and bachata. I was listening to Spanish radio before I understood the words. I fell in love with the rhythm first. The language followed. That curiosity led me to fall in love with and marry a Mexicana and eventually move to Mexico City. I was folded into her family almost overnight. I’d walk in the door and immediately be handed a plate of food, a cerveza, and a pour of tequila. Mexico made my world bigger. It showed me how much beauty exists outside the bubbles we’re born into. And how much we miss when we don’t lean toward each other with respect. Florida gave me sun. Mexico gave me depth. New York gave me pressure. All three live in the works.

When something expands your world like that, you don’t hoard it. I’ve been painting artists and spaces that shaped me. Beyond just the Diego’s and Frida’s. From a blind sculptor in Oaxaca, to campesinos as protagonists instead of background figures, to murals in the U.S. carrying Mexican stories across borders. I’m not Mexican. I don’t pretend to be. But I’ve been shaped by Mexico in permanent ways. Sharing those stories is simply passing on what I was given.

Photography still feeds a lot of my work. I take and collect images constantly. Markets, workers, gestures, textures. Months later they’ll resurface in my paintings. Before I work, I usually burn palo santo. Not superstition. Just a signal to myself it’s time. Music sets the temperature. Bossa Nova or Jazz when I need looseness. Afrobeat or Salsa when I need heat. I keep art books open all around me. I visit museums as often as I can. Travel resets me. And when I can’t travel I look through old photos. The ritual isn’t rigid. It’s about staying porous. And yeah. A small pour of mezcal doesn’t hurt.

Dead: Jean-Michel Basquiat to talk about art and innovation in New York. Fela Kuti to talk about using art as resistance. Robin Williams to talk about joy and mental health amidst a hard world. Alive: Daniel Day Lewis to talk about devotion to craft. Bad Bunny to talk about shifting culture without asking permission. Or Pope Francis…because I’m genuinely curious what he’d say after a second copita. 

Mezcal tends to open honest conversations. That’s a great reason to pour another.

Follow Zac on his Instagram. 

View Zac's Limited Edition Merch with Madre.

Visit House of Somos in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. 

Images by Thibault Maufras.

I’ve been creative for as long as I can remember. My mom taught me how to sew when I was young. I’d find old suits at thrift stores and reshape them to fit me. We were constantly rescuing furniture people had thrown away. Sanding, repainting, rebuilding. She’d also buy as many instruments as she could find and have us learn them all. She saw value where most didn’t. That shaped everything. Creativity wasn’t sacred in our house. It was practical. Hands-on. It fixed things. I found my way into photography in my early twenties, mostly documenting travel, menswear, and fascinating people. At the beginning of COVID, I worked through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron with some friends. It forced me to confront something I’d been avoiding over the years. I wanted to paint. And I knew I had to do it whether I made money from it or not.

Connection. I’m drawn to places where cultures overlap. Big cities, borderlands, kitchens, markets. I’ve always believed our perspective is limited by our proximity. If you never leave your bubble, your world stays small. Art, for me, is a bridge. I grew up in a fairly insulated environment around a lot of people just like me. My life now looks very different. Painting has become a way to hold conversations that might not otherwise happen. About labor, migration, lineage, beauty, faith, identity. Not in a preachy way. Just human. In terms of art history, I frequently return to Los Tres Grandes. Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. They believed art should be public and political. Painted on walls, not hidden in private collections. Rivera especially elevated campesinos and workers as heroic subjects, placing them at the center of national identity. That shift mattered. It moved power out of palaces and into the streets. There’s a famous photograph of campesinos standing below one of Rivera’s murals, recognizing themselves in it. That moment. That recognition, surprise, and sense of pride is really beautiful to me. I also deeply admire Alfredo Ramos Martínez, who painted Indigenous and working-class subjects with dignity and modernist restraint, bridging Mexico and California in a powerful way. I’m less interested in art that flatters power. And more interested in creations that give dignity to ordinary lives. That’s the line I follow.