about the artist

BIO

Amelia E. Foster is an American artist exploring the liminality of memory and its influence on collective narratives and societal structures. Before pursuing art, she worked as an environmental microbiologist at Oregon State University, where she received her Bachelor of Science and Art. In 2025 she was awarded a two person show at PRACTICE Gallery in Philadelphia, PA and was selected to participate in Together We Art Fair in NYC. In 2024 she was awarded the Rondo Residency in Mexico City for the summer 2025 session, and the SVA Artist Residency Project in 2022. Additionally, Foster has exhibited her work across the United States, including at Information Space in Philadelphia, FOCUS Art Fair NYC, Tunnel Projects for Miami Art Week, and the School of Visual Arts gallery.  She was a cooperative member and developed the residency program at Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative from 2019-2021. Foster has given artist talks and workshops at New York University, Columbia University, the Southern Harm Reduction Conference, and the Association for Conflict Resolution, amongst others. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Transformative cycles of abuse, decay and rebirth form the center of my practice, which spans across drawings, sculptures and installtions. Rooted in a visceral sense of absence, I create ephemeral objects and spaces where intuition and covert violence meet. Through the physicality of my work, be it handbuilding clay or the touch of a hot soldering iron, I uncover and release emotions held within a dissociative amnesia accessible only to the subconscious. By manipulating the fluidity between fragile materials such as graphite, pastels, and plant matter, and permanent ones such as ceramic, metal and stone, I excavate and memorialize corporeal and collective tensions borne from opaque and false memories. 

My focus on time-based materiality is informed by the philosophies of the Feminist Land Art movement, particularly its reclamation of history, mythologies, and embodied knowledge. In Overlay, Lucy Lippard describes Michelle Stuart’s work as focusing “on the way things break and fit together, and on the resulting patterns that underlie all life structure.” This sentiment acts as a guiding mantra in my practice, often leading me to hyperfixate my investigations on historically perpetuated traumas on a familial, societal and environmental scope. Overarching themes include growth/decay, delicate/resilient, trauma/transformation. 

I view my works as gateways of remembering, exploring the alteration of negative spaces with the passing of time. Bearing the imprints of touch, my works metamorphosize, echoing the body’s own process of surviving complex histories that resist naming.

Ownership

I retain all rights to work I have created, including copyright and the right to make reproductions. The collector or buyer may not reproduce the artwork in any way unless they have obtained my written permission.