Amanda Williams

Architect, Artist, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Parent

Amanda Williams is a visual artist who trained as an architect. Her practice blurs the distinction between art and architecture through works that employ color as a way to draw attention to the political complexities of race, place and value in cities. The landscapes in which she operates are the visual residue of the invisible policies and forces that have misshapen most inner cities. Williams’s installations, paintings, video, 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 in America. Amanda has exhibited widely, including the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, a solo exhibition at the MCA Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis. She is a a 2018 USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Foundation grantee, and a member of the Museum Design Team for the Obama Presidential Center. Amanda is this year’s Bill and Stephanie Sick Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago and has previously served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University and Washington University in St. Louis. She lives and works on Chicago’s south side.

Color, change, Chicago

Art can shift possibility

architecture, art, chicago, color, imagination

rolling my tongue; making people smile; guessing answers on TV Game Shows