Antoine Williams' mixed-media work investigates his cultural identity by exploring power, fear and the perception of signs within society. Heavily influenced by science fiction, and his rural, working-class upbringing in Red Springs, North Carolina, Antoine has created his own mythology about the complexities of contemporary Black life. An artist-educator, Antoine received his BFA from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and his MFA from UNC Chapel Hill. He helped start the God City Art Collective in Charlotte, where he participated in a number of social practice projects. He has exhibited in a number of places, including at the Mint Museum of Art, Michigan State University, Columbia Museum of Art, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, 21c Museum, as well as many other venues. He is also a recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell Award of Painters and Sculptors. Williams is an assistant professor of art at Guilford College.
My interdisciplinary practice is an exploration of the fluidity of the monstrous through the lens of science fiction and critical race theory. Notions power, perception, and fear are also examined as they relate to institutional inequality. I have created a mythology, about the complexities of contemporary Black life. My artwork is influenced by sci-fi literature from such authors as Octavia Butler, and H.P. Lovecraft. Themes in social science fiction, such as relationships to what may be considered a foreign or alien body, can be analogous to the many Black experiences in America. With that, I investigate what is called “monster culture”. The result is a process-based practice involving mixed-media installation, painting, drawing, collage and assemblage.
Much of my work references the west coast Black arts assemblage movement of the 1960s and 70s, as well as the Dadaist, who appropriated and re-contextualized images from society as a subversive act. I am interested in making the personal, public. Therefore, these works are inspired by personal experiences from a rural working-class, upbringing, in Red Springs, North Carolina that related to wider contemporary concerns of race, class, and, masculinity.
www.antoinewilliamsart.com
