Bio
Melanie Elyse Brewster (b. Miami, Florida) is an artist, scholar, and practicing psychologist who lives and works in New York City. She earned her PhD from the University of Florida in 2011 and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2024. Brewster’s interdisciplinary art and scholarship focuses on stigma and queer futurities—informed by surreal, campy aesthetics that center craft, costume, and performance to destabilize identity. She uses fiber, collage, and assemblage to create works that address wild, mythological manifestations of gender and sexuality.
Her research has been featured in media outlets such as CNN, NPR, Vice News, and the CBC, whilst her art has been exhibited nationally at universities and galleries such as The CAMP Gallery (Miami), The Invisible Dog Art Center (Brooklyn), and La Mama Galleria (NYC). Brewster has published over 70 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and a book, Atheists in America, on experiences of marginality and stress in the United States.
Recent art accolades include a solo presentation at Brazosport College, an upcoming residency at Vermont Studio Center, and the SVA thesis award for her parafictional work on Wolfmotherhood. Currently she is a licensed psychologist and professor at Columbia University in the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology.
Abbreviated Art CV is available here.
Psychology CV is available here.
Over the Pandemic I Got Really into Plants, 2022, photograph.
Installation view of Palo Santo, Candle & Crystal, and Evil Eye masks (2022) at SVA.
Still from Pandemic Weavings, 2020, performance documentation, Wassaic, New York.
Artist Statement
My interdisciplinary work examines the bizarre paradoxes inherent in ‘wellness’ practices and hyper-capitalist spirituality. I work in assemblage and fiber, constructing maximalist ritual objects, masks, and wearables from allegedly mystical goods such as crystals, candles, or religious tchotchkes. Using film and photography, I document the activation of these objects to sardonically demonstrate their healing properties. My work on paper has focused more explicitly on nature worship in the Anthropocene, including plant-human interactions and the desire to ‘rewild’ or be fully consumed by wilderness. Playing with the idea of ‘spiritual drag’ by using irreverent, over-the-top methods, I explore the effort it takes to ameliorate pain and stay grounded—particularly for marginalized community members.
My work is informed by both surrealism and camp aesthetics that center performance, costume, and craft to destabilize and queer identity. As a professor and licensed psychologist, I draw from theoretical frameworks such as minority stress theory to simultaneously honor and satirize the myriad ways that people cope with loss, stigma, and grief. Through this lens, I build strangely magical worlds—vulnerable and darkly humorous—wherein my subjects try to stay resilient in the face of oppression. Across 2D and 3D works, my subjects tend to appear transformed, disfigured, or masked; it is not clear if these changes are by choice or involuntary. I immerse viewers in uncertain moments and ambiguous borderlands: liminal spaces that allow us to confront otherness and open up possibilities for unconventional methods of wellness.
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