Amber Helene Muller St Thomas

Lives and works in Toronto, ON, Canada

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 separating these media within a single project. In 2023, I began working extensively with cyanotypes, merging my textile work and photographic practice and creating performance props from 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...

Artwork