AMBROSE RHAPSODY MURRAY

BIO

Ambrose is a self-taught artist, born in Jacksonville, Florida and raised in Asheville, NC. Through sewing, painting, material experimentation, film and collaborative projects, they create stories to investigate our relationships to the colonial undercurrents of our lives, the charged symbology of black feminine bodies, and the ephemeral and layered qualities of memory and remembering. Ambrose was transformed by Black Studies while at Yale College where they received their BA. Through their work, Ambrose seeks to bring physical form to the ideas and theories they have been struck by from Black feminist writers and visionaries. Their work and practice are rooted in ethea of care, reverence, intimacy, time-travel, healing, grief and attending to the stories of the dead. Their work has exhibited across the US as well as abroad in Berlin, Mexico City, London and more.

(Pronouns: She/They/He)

WORKING ARTIST STATEMENT

My process is an exploration of our bodies as sites of historical memory and mystical/imaginative potential. The act of making through sewing, painting and assemblage are processes to imagine and visualize the complex layers and depth of story that live within our flesh and fibers. I aim to visualize the ephemerality and nuance of memory — to contend with the idea that our bodies, brains and sense of reality are “not containers for memory, but are memory themselves” (quoted from Alok Vaid-Menon). My practice becomes a place to contemplate and imagine the thin veil that exists between the spirit world and the physical world, and to make visible the slipperiness between memory/remembering, spirit, imagination and one’s sense of self.