Amy Malbeuf BIOGRAPHY

 

Amy Malbeuf is a Métis visual artist. Amy is from Rich Lake, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory currently living on unceded Mi’kmaq territory in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Through mediums such as animal hair tufting, beadwork, installation, performance, and tattooing Malbeuf explores notions of identity, place, language, and ecology. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in over forty shows at such venues as Art Mûr, Montréal, Winnipeg Art Gallery; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; and Pataka Art + Museum, Porirua, New Zealand. Malbeuf holds a Native Cultural Arts Instructor Certificate from Portage College and a MFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

tuft life is a 2018 lithograph by Amy Malbeuf. In it we can witness the skills and experience necessary for Amy to be successful in her tattoo practice. Amy practices both hand-poke tattoo and skin-stitch tattoo. Both of these techniques require drawing skills. Skin-stitching requires the ability to sew very carefully with needle and thread through skin. Amy’s experience in beading and tufting on various materials, but especially leather, is integral to her being able to be a successful skin-stitch tattooist. This piece itself involves both drawing and caribou tufting, two art forms that require practice and focus. The title of this work gives us the idea that to be an artist is more than just a vocational choice, but an act that permeates every part of one’s being. The act of creating and taking the time to learn the skills in order to create is an act of reverence for one’s medium and for the space we live in. In drawing, tufting, tattooing, there is a skin of sorts, paper, hide, living human skin, that takes part in the art by holding the work.  The artist engages with that skin in the most intimate of ways.