Untitled (Lemon Tree in Victorville)
2018
Chicago, Illinois
Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.
Brittney Leeanne Williams is a Chicago-based artist, originally from Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, and Venice, Italy, as well as locally in Chicago and throughout the Midwest. Williams’s set design for the short film Self-Deportation has been featured at national and international film festivals, including at Anthology Film Archives in New York and the Pineapple Underground Film Festival in Hong Kong. Williams attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2017) and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008-09). She was a 2017-18 artist-in-residence at University of Chicago (CSRPC/Arts + Public Life) and has previously held residencies at Chicago Artists Coalition (HATCH Projects) and Hyde Park Art Center (The Center Program).
Painters & Sculptors Grant, 2018
My work explores the Black body as a site of suffering, memorialization, and transcendence. Rather than constructing Blackness through ‘black’ skin, I use red to disrupt the viewer’s expectations, interpreting anew the figure carrying the Black experience. I excavate personal and familial histories to create surreal pastoral landscapes for these fictional red bodies to roam.”