Sean Khales's practice is rooted in stone carving, sculpture, and architecture, expressed through direct engagement with raw material: marble, alabaster, oil, and paint. A queer Middle Eastern American artist based in Brooklyn, NY, Khales treats making as physical labor with spiritual stakes. Carving demands dust, strain, and a slow negotiation with material that resists easy shaping. This physicality is central to the work, not incidental to it.

Kizy draws on Chaldean ancestral history and family ties to Tel Kaif, Iraq, and Oaxaca, Mexico, approaching stone and material sourcing as a form of inherited language, one that is still being learned and interpreted rather than fixed. This background informs how Khales approaches large-scale works, treating each one as an opportunity to translate personal and ancestral material history into physical form.

At the core of the work is a single question: what does sanctuary feel like in the body, and how can that feeling be built into permanent, physical space? Kizy's sculptural forms are deliberately substantial, weighted, durable, and built to hold up over time, carrying the same physical and emotional weight as the histories it represents. Each artwork is approached as a chance to bring that sense of sanctuary into a specific site, built from the ground up out of material, memory, and craft.