El/yse Ambrose, PhD (they/them)* is an artist-scholar whose research, art, and teaching lie at the intersections of blackness, sexuality, gender, and spiritualities/the sacred.
Ambrose’s book, A Blackqueer Sexual Ethics: Embodiment, Possibility, and Living Archive, examines blackqueer spiritualities as a generative source for countering dominant antiblack, antibody logics and practices at the intersections of sexuality, race, gender, and religion. They are the creator of the Black Trans Ethical World(un)making Lab (est. Spring 2024). Ambrose’s second book project examines sacred world(un)making in Brazilian travesti and black trans visual cultures.
Ambrose’s art was most recently selected as part of the official programming for Circa (One Institute, Los Angeles), the first and only queer histories festival in the U.S. They were in residence with Black August Arts (Tkaronto/Toronto 2025 Cohorts). Their ongoing photo-sonic series, “Spirit in the Dark Body: Black Queer Expressions of the Im/material,” premiered during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion at the L Street Fine Arts Gallery (San Diego, CA) and has shown with the House of Mark West (The Bronx, NY)— one of the few black queer-owned galleries in the country. Their work has also been shown in Queens and Rochester, NY; Florianópolis, Santa Caterina, Brasil; and São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Their most recent work, buried lies— an improvisational elemental ritual— contends with antiblack violence as imposed on black youths throughout history, utilizing the stories of 13-year-old Lizzie Durr (1882?-1895) and 18-year-old Michael Brown (1996-2014) as points of entry in this counter-spell of care.
Ambrose currently serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Black Study and the Department for the Study of Religion at University of California, Riverside. Their research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Center for Ideas and Society at UC Riverside, the Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion, the Forum for Theological Exploration, Columbia University's Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Yale University LGBT Studies Fellowship, and the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+).
Ambrose’s work and commentary have been featured in the Huffington Post, the Christian Century’s podcast Contemplating Now, ForHarriet.com, Vice, and CBC Radio One’s Tapestry, as well as artistic venues as BMoreArt and the arts section of Religious Studies Review.
Ambrose's transdisciplinary research interests include black queer and trans spiritualities and cultural production, black religion, trans and queer of color critique, black feminisms, black queer/trans diaspora studies, and performance and visual art.
El/yse Ambrose resides in southern California. They are a fulfilled partner, plant sibling, and parakeet parent.
El/yse Ambrose’s Abridged Artist Statement: Abridged Artist Statement: I employ images (still, moving, digital, and archival) and sound (spoken and found) to practice witnessing and recording the aliveness and possibility of blackness, transness, and queerness while retaining subjects’ opacities, illegibilities, and refusals. Through my visual and aural projects, I foreground the profundity of quotidian world(un)making, of subtlety and slowness in movement, as well as themes of intimacy and connection, healing and the sacred. My praxis is grounded in black feminist, black trans, and black queer ways of knowing. (See art at Photo-Sonic Imagination)
*I am both Elyse and El. My names are my most suitable referents. However, in line with English language conventions, “they/them” are pronouns one may employ.