A self-taught painter and seamstress hailing from North Carolina, Ambrose Rhapsody Murray has been steadily generating buzz for her exquisitely crafted textile works that explore the human condition. “I have always found so much power and refuge in making things,” she says. “Growing up biracial, Black, and queer in the South, I got to know myself through art.”
With a degree in African American studies from Yale, she creates deeply personal pieces that meld her research in ancestral connections with spirituality and intuition. Since receiving a YoungArts prize in 2014, Murray has exhibited with N’Namdi Contemporary in Miami, Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, and Fridman Gallery in New York, where she had her first solo exhibition this November.
Rewriting history: Murray’s latest series is based on archival photographs of Black women and girls from the early 1900s. “Circulated around the world as postcards, these images were forms of pornography, tools of colonial propaganda, and lexicons for violence. I hope to revise these images through a lens of protection, care, and love. I want to repair these histories that live within each figure’s body and my own so that we may find the space for healing, recovery, and magical possibilities.”
