BIO

Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas is a Canadian artist who lives and works in Toronto. Their artistic practice is based on developing performative actions that include elements of touch and queer gestures. They primarily work in lens-based media, textiles and performance. They are interested in communal interaction, materiality, and the potential for objects to function as both symbols of self and surrogates for intimacy.

Müller St. Thomas completed their MFA at York University (2017). They were a beneficiary of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Graduate Master’s Scholarship (2016). They participated in the 2018 Hamilton Supercrawl Arts Festival and the 2020 Venice International Performance Art Week. In 2021, they attended the Cleaning the House Workshop by the Marina Abramović Institute in Greece. In 2022, they participated in the NARS Artist Residency in Brooklyn, New York, with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. They completed a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, supported by the Liz Crockford Artists Fund Award (2023). In 2024, they will be an artist in residence at Mass MoCA, and in 2025, they have a solo show at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, New York.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice involves gestures of interaction and connection. I create artworks by engaging with everyday objects, drawing inspiration from mundane life experiences. I am interested in exploring the implications of collective contact, tactility, and desire through the communal holding and passing of objects. These objects range from everyday household items such as cookware and pillows to more private objects such as old photos and diaries. I primarily work in photography, performance, and textiles, frequently questioning and moving the borders between these media within a single project. In 2023, I started working extensively with the cyanotype process, merging my textile work and photography practice and creating performance props from my cyanotype soft sculptures.

I am interested in creating performances and experiences through enactments of gestures that I consider queer. These gestures focus attention on themes of reversal, reconstruction, and shift. I am also concerned with embodiment and the erasure and visibility of the queer body. Through physical contact, I reflect on how human bodies might relate to inanimate objects to generate collective engagement and build relationships. I have enacted performances focusing on sharing food and drink as a communal experience. These same gestures have often been endurance pieces that test how long I can hold or balance objects on my body. I am interested in the weight of objects as symbolism for the emotional and physical fortitude that queer individuals must bear. I also use this symbolism to explore the gendered expectations faced by women and femme queer individuals. I am interested in the emotions that arise from group experiences, holding objects, and exploring the potential for things to act as surrogates for intimacy or human touch.

I often upcycle second-hand clothing or cloth to create new works in my textile practice. Before making these pieces, I pass the materials to people and ask them to hold, touch, and sleep with the clothing. I am drawn to the history of touch within these textiles and the potential for garments to reveal or conceal gender. My performances often incorporate these textiles alongside other objects. By interacting with these objects using my body, I consider how they can be emblems of experience, identity, and emotion.

My photographic practice investigates performance actions that use the human body and objects as emblems. I work in digital and analogue photography, making cyanotypes on various fabric types. I document performative moments of tactile engagement and exchange utilizing a long exposure to capture the movement and fluidity of the human body interacting with inanimate objects. While I value photography for its ability to capture a moment in space and time, in many instances, I aim for my images to move beyond documentation. I edit my digital photos and cyanotype negatives through additions, retractions, and collages. My cyanotype negatives are all created from my extensive image archive. After the image is dry, I stitch into the cyanotype fabric to create additional visual narratives using colour, mark-making, and motifs. My work aims to investigate art's ability to challenge the erasure of queer identities through embodiment and depiction while utilizing my body and camera as a way to create symbols of resistance.

Click HERE to view PDF of Curriculum Vitae

Documentation credit: Yuula Benivolski, Dave Kemp, Jacques Martens, Lorenza Cini, Natalie Logan, Sam Lowen & Amber Helene Müller St. Thomas

Documentation credit for site front page (in order of appearance): Yuula Benivolski, Young Dong Yu

Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for the generous support.