Alexandra Emberley is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in Tkaronto/Toronto, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat, and the treaty lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit. These lands are covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the land.

Working with archival and literary sources, her practice unsettles familiar ways of perceiving nature and gender through installations of embroidery, textiles, costume, and digital media. Her current project, creaturely, supported by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, combines hand embroidery, coded animations, and an interactive website. Details in late August 2026.

Her solo exhibition for D: becoming a tree was presented at Gallery 505 in Calgary (2023–24). Recent group exhibitions include the RISD Textile Triennial (2024), New Contemporaries 2023 at Gelman Gallery, RISD, Inherent Vice: Hidden Narratives at the RISD Museum (2022–23), and A Moment That Lasts Beyond Now at Sol Koffler Gallery (2022). Earlier exhibitions include Drawn at Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati (2014), the Biennale internationale d'estampe contemporaine de Trois-Rivières (2013), Cosmopolitan Animals at Senate House, London (2012), UpArt! at the Gladstone Hotel, Toronto (2011), and Testimony of Echo at the Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax (2010). As Graduate Fellow in the Department of Costume and Textiles at the RISD Museum, she co-curated Sensing Fashion (2023) with Department Head and Curator Kate Irvin. Her study of surface design and the garment includes studies in embroidery at École Lesage, Paris, and bespoke tailoring at the Tailoring Academy, Macclesfield, UK.

Her work has been supported by funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, and the Halifax Regional Municipality. She has held residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation at cSPACE, and Klosters Bentlage in Germany. Her graduate studies were supported by a RISD Graduate Fellowship, the Rosanne Somerson Scholarship, the Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship, and the AFA Graduate Award in Art and Design.

She holds an Hons BA in Philosophy and Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto, an MA in Film and Video and a PhD from York University, an MFA in Printmaking from the University of Alberta, and an MFA in Textiles from RISD (2023). She has taught at the post-secondary level for over twenty years. She held a permanent appointment as Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at the Alberta University of the Arts, where she also served for three years as Chair of the School of Craft and Emerging Media and as Program Advisor for the institution's first MFA, and an earlier limited-term appointment in Foundations at NSCAD University. She currently teaches at OCAD University and Brock University.

Contact: aemberley2025@gmail.com