
What black is this you say?—“Your love of bird watching could have caused your death that day. Your Harvard degree does not insure your safety”—black (06.22.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
What black is this you say?—“You refuse to stop saying ‘irregardless’ despite knowing that it is in fact NOT a word.”—black (06.12.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
What black is this you say?—“You thought getting Obama elected meant you could take a break from blackness”—black (08.09.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
60 x 60 inches
What black is this you say?—“None of your business”—black (11.06.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
What black is this you say?—“You secretly believe praying over your smothered pork chops reduces the risk of hypertension and calories”—black (06.06.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
What black is this you say?—“You wish you could see the black on the inside of Stevie Wonder’s eyelids so you too could have inner visions”—black, v2 (09.24.20), 2020
Oil on linen stretched over panel
20 x 20 inches
Feel the Warmth and Luxury, 2020
Faux fur, gold leaf on wood panel
16 x 9 inches
What black is this you say?—“It’s easier for young black men to rip an entire ATM out of a bank drive-thru machine and crack it open to get to the money than it is for them to get a job, Bank Account or Loan from that same bank”—black (06.03.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
What black is this you say?—-“Apparently even Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s Lives Matter now.”—black (06.17.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
What black is this you say?—“You’re not African-American, you’re black”—black (08.23.20), 2020
Oil on linen stretched over panel
60 x 60 inches
What black is this you say?—"You proudly embrace your multiple heritages but you know for a fact that you will never be described by any cop who has pulled you over as 'biracial'—black, v3 (study for 08.17.20), 2020
Watercolor on paper
7 x 10 inches, unframed
8.75 x 11.75 inches, framed
What black is this you say?—"I cain't go swimming today, I just got my hair done"—black, v1 (study for 07.10.20), 2020
Watercolor on paper
7 x 10 inches, unframed
8.75 x 11.75 inches, framed
What black is this you say?—"Your mother calmly explaining to you all from her perch in the front seat of the car, that you had better not embarrass her nor the race once you get inside Evergreen Plaza."—black, v5 (study for 06.11.20), 2020
Watercolor on paper
7 x 10 inches, unframed
8.75 x 11.75 inches, framed
What black is this you say?—"You secretly believe praying over your smothered pork chops reduces the risk of hypertension and calories"—black, v1 (study for 06.06.20), 2020
Watercolor on paper
7 x 10 inches, unframed
8.75 x 11.75 inches, framed
What black is this you say?—“You buy organic pork rinds from Whole Foods”—black (study for 06.05.20), 2020
Watercolor on paper
7 x 10 inches, unframed
8.75 x 11.75 inches, framed
What black is this you say?—“Your brown is blacker than thou”—-black (study for 07.06.20), 2020
Oil, mixed media on wood panel
20 x 20 inches
Stacks on Stacks on Stacks, 2017
Acrylic, plaster, marble dust, ink, imitation goldleaf on pegboard (49 piece)
5 x 7 inches each
It’s a Goldmine/Is the Gold Mine?, 2016
Imitation gold metal leaf on salvaged Chicago brick
dimensions variable
Color(ed) Theory Series: Flamin' Red Hots (Demolition Bus), 2018
Color Photograph
21.125 x 31.125 inches, framed
19.625 x 29.625 inches, unframed
Edition 2 of 6
Just Practice Justice, 2018
Neon
87.5 x 6.5 x 6 inches
Amanda Williams (b. 1974, Evanston, IL) is a visual artist and architect (Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University). Her practice employs color as an operative means for drawing attention to the complex ways race informs how we assign value to the spaces we occupy. Williams’ installations, sculptures, paintings, and works on paper seek to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar and in the process, raise questions about the state of urban space and ownership in America.
Amanda’s exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2021), the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2020), and at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, a public commission with Andres L. Hernandez (2017). She is co-designer of a forthcoming permanent monument to Shirley Chisholm in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY. She is on the Museum Design Team for the Obama Presidential Library Center.
Williams is an Architectural Record awardee, a USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Painting and Sculpture grantee, a 3Arts Next Level awardee, and is the inaugural Artist-In-Residence at Smith College. She is highly sought after as a lecturer, including a 2018 TedTalk. Amanda sits on the boards of several organizations including The Black Reconstruction Collective, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and the Graham Foundation.
Her work is in several permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art (New York). In a recent participatory artwork titled Embodied Sensations, Williams considers how COVID-19 has reshaped how we move, and how we relate to one another. She examines the stark inequities and systemic injustices that underlie such shifts; asking us to reflect on control and freedom, isolation and community, prejudice and violence, love and fear. Her projects have been published in ‘Black Futures’ and ‘Radical Architecture of the Future’. Amanda lives and works on the south side of Chicago.
Concurrent to her fascination with color theory, the artist took it upon herself to use this knowledge in order to reclaim for the people spaces decalred unworthy, employing her own personal theory of color to find a common ground.
Can race and color be separated? Deeply concerned with the way that color shapes our world, Chicago-based architect and artist Amanda Williams has long engaged with this question in her practice. Williams’s ongoing fascination with color is rooted in a quest to unearth the possibilities and limits of racialized—both theoretical and real—readings of color.
Gagosian is pleased to present CANDYLADYBLACK, an exhibition of new paintings by Amanda Williams from the series What Black Is This, You Say? (2020–). Williams’s painting What black is this you say?—Although rarely recognized as such, ‘The Candy Lady’ and her ‘Candy Store’ provided one of your earliest examples of black enterprise, cooperative economics, black women CEOs and good customer service”—black (07.24.20) (2021) was included, along with earlier works in the series, in Social Works II at Gagosian London in 2021. CANDYLADYBLACK is her first solo exhibition at the gallery.
The “Slave Play” actress and the Chicago-based artist discuss generational gaps, success and the art that brought them each acclaim.
RECORD has announced the 2021 winners of its Women in Architecture Design Leadership awards, which recognize and promote the role of women in the profession in the U.S. across five categories: Design Leader, New Generation Leader, Innovator, Activist and Educator. Now in its eighth year, the award’s winners for 2021 are Design Leader Annabelle Selldorf, New Generation Leader Amanda Williams, Innovator Julie Bargmann, Educator Deborah Berke, and Activist Tamarah Begay. Through their efforts in design and in tackling broader social challenges, these five women have proved to be inspiring leaders in the field of architecture and beyond.
The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) reopened its doors during the COVID epidemic on August 27, 2020. The entrance was taken over by a series of physical controls to guarantee the health of the few visitors that would be allowed in. Only a hundred guests were allowed each hour. In fact, the total capacity was capped at a quarter of the usual number. This experience—of being at the museum almost on our own—allowed for a different phenomenology of being there.
By Charles L. Davis II
The espousal of the doctrine of Negro inferiority by the South was
primarily because of economic motives and the inter-connected
political urge necessary to support slave industry; but to the watch-
ing world it sounded like the carefully thought out result of experi-
ence and reason; and because of this it was singularly disastrous for
modern civilization in science and religion, in art and government,
as well as in industry. The South could say that the Negro, even
when brought into modern civilization, could not be civilized, and
that, therefore, he and the other colored peoples of the world were
so far inferior to the whites that the white world had a right to rule
mankind for their own selfish interests.
– W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America
Chicago-based artist Amanda Williams – tipped by architect Frida Escobedo as one of 25 creative leaders of the future in Wallpaper’s 25th Anniversary Issue ‘5x5’ project – uses colour to dissect politics, urban landscapes and Black social space.
Three architects, three journalists and two designers gathered over Zoom to make a list of the most influential and lasting buildings that have been erected — or cleverly updated — since World War II. Here are the results.
A list of new and recently released books from Chicago authors or publishers, plus some books you might have missed when they first came out.
What does it mean to watch and move through space, in dance and in life? As we emerge from the pandemic, we still have a moment to hold on to all that’s slow.
Amanda Williams’s ‘Embodied Sensations’ at MoMA; Matthew Wong’s ink drawings; and installations by Cameron Rowland take on policing.
On April 28, 2021 Design in Dialogue welcomed Amanda Williams, an artist whose work questions the ways that context changes the perception of the material culture of the built envionment.
Curators and educators talk with the artist about her participatory project at MoMA, and how it helps process this moment.
Artists Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous use architecture to explore liberatory possibilities for Black communities.
A new collective of Black architects and artists, formed out of a show now at MoMA, aims to “reclaim the larger civic promise of architecture.” The MoMA show was organized by Sean Anderson, an associate curator at the museum, and Mabel O. Wilson, an architect, Columbia University professor and author, among much else, of “White by Design,” which describes the Modern’s failure to display and collect works by Black architects and designers.
Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot will join the Mayor’s Office of Community Engagement and other City leaders for a celebratory virtual event to commemorate Black History Month by honoring 20 Black community leaders for their commitment to supporting and advocating for Chicago’s dynamic Black residents.
The artist’s brightly painted houses return forgotten sections of Chicago’s south side to vibrant life.
Amanda Williams responds to Blackout Tuesday, a viral Instagram movement in reaction to recent police brutality and racism, with her new series: What Black Is This, You Say?
“My beginning of the series was actually a little bit of a pushback both of the need for people to think there has to be an immediate answer, usually not a well thought out answer, and simultaneously that Blackness is monolithic,” Williams said. “So, all Black people need to get on board with subscribing to a certain way of expressing Blackness, or frustrations with injustice. And there’s less and less tolerance for more than one way to do that.”
In lieu of her Open House Lecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design scheduled for April 2, 2020 that was cancelled due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Williams speaks with Sala Elise Patterson about her work, purpose, and path.
On a clear October evening, a full house gathered at the Newberry, Chicago’s world-renowned independent research library, to listen to a conversation between author, photographer and former Sun-Times architecture critic Lee Bey and visual artist Amanda Williams.
In his new book, Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side, Bey documents the physical attributes of significant architecture with striking photographic images portrayed at their best under the bright, blue skies of morning light. Throughout the book he thoughtfully weaves a cultural and social narrative elevating these environs to their rightful importance while criticizing forces and policies that have ignored the South Side’s rich architectural heritage. Echoing Bey’s visual cues, architecture-trained visual artist Amanda Williams’ foreword sets a joyful tone comparing the exuberance of Bey’s work to the happy crescendo of one of her favorite musical pieces: Native Chicagoan Donny Hathaway’s 1970 hit “This Christmas,” with its heartfelt message, “I’m gonna get to know you better,” resounds with the camaraderie and experiences both she and Bey have had with South Side culture.
To put the significance of this book project in perspective, Bey’s ascribed South Side represents an area that makes up more than half the city’s land mass. Approximately bounded by Cermak Road, 138th Street, Lake Michigan and Western Avenue, the area is vast and includes work by architecture and design luminaries, businesses run by notable black entrepreneurs, pioneering artists and a South Side community representing over thirty neighborhoods and a population of nearly 800,000.
Review of Amanda Williams' Colored Theory series and surrounding work.
Amanda Williams’s Cadastral Shaking (Chicago v1), which depicts a redlined map of Chicago that has been rearranged in effort to imagine how the city’s rampant inequality could be reconfigured, is currently on loan to newly inaugurated Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Amanda Williams and Olalekan Jeyifous won the inaugural commission for She Built NYC with their monument proposal for Prospect Park.
Review of Dimensions of Citizenship at Wrightwood 659.
Review of Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos at Wrightwood 659, Chicago.
Profile of Amanda Williams by Ted Loos.
Review of the United States Pavilion Dimensions of Citizesnship at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
This year's Venice Architecture Biennale shaped for the first time by Chicagoans.