Amanda Williams: Why I turned Chicago's abandoned homes into art
Amanda Williams 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. Full bio
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with elusive-sounding names,
I am black, thank you --
in a segregated city as I have,
that color and race can never be separate.
reminding you of your color.
is a socially constructed phenomenon,
in our everyday existence.
culturally coded beauty.
with brightly painted storefronts
and beauty supply houses,
learned the foundational principles
come to know is called color theory.
by this term in college --
with their treatises
color palettes and associated principles.
to the art and science
compositions and spaces.
about the color red,
color of a cola can is red,
all of us can agree that it's red
of people in this room.
taught since kindergarten is primary --
as a relational context.
to determine which neighborhoods
federal housing loans.
was its own kind of color palette,
than all of those color palettes
in college combined.
who lived in neighborhoods like mine.
were literally coloring in these maps
in the foreclosure crisis.
symbolized by these Xs
on the fronts of vacated houses
color palettes were determining
my own color palette
who live where I do
that color had been defined for us.
have to search far for
emerges from this reality?
understanding of color
understanding of color.
was a two-year artistic project
to my own neighborhoods
79th Street right now
of the slightly greener shade of cyan,
is Ultra Sheen?" --
grandmother's bathroom ensue.
when you have Ultra Sheen?
that were similar to mine
more than the product itself.
"Harold's Chicken Shack."
as I could fit in my trunk,
in monochromatic fashion.
in a way that I hadn't before.
to the biggest canvas I could imagine ...
familiar streets that I'd grown up on,
with the city's data portal
tagged for demolition --
what it meant to just let color rule,
different pictures about the South Side.
to their fully lined counterparts.
like Monopoly pieces
of that paint or until someone complained.
this image one day.
when he drove past
mysteriously change colors overnight,
a Crown Royal bag involved,
was almost all but erased,
could pop up in unexpected places
that the music industry and society
had become synonymous with royalty.
had regained its value.
despite being strangers
absolutely nothing to do with Prince,
full ownership of this project
transformed the neighborhood
that we like to rely on:
reduced crime, no alcoholism --
catalyzed new conversations
visible the uncomfortable questions
have to ask themselves
of myself and my neighborhood counterparts
to collective agency needs to be.
that didn't wait for permission
and paint crew members said it best
change the neighborhood,
what's possible for their neighborhood,"
"Why are you painting that house
to come and tear it down?"
understand color as both a medium
that I am identified in society.
of making the world better,
both of these ways that I'm understood,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Amanda Williams - Visual artistAmanda Williams 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.
Why you should listen
The landscapes in which Amanda Williams operates are the visual residue of the invisible policies and forces that have misshapen most inner cities. Her installations, paintings, video and works on paper seek to inspire new ways of looking at the familiar -- and raise questions about the state of urban space in America in the process.
Williams 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 2018 United States Artists Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors grantee, an Efroymson Family Arts Fellow, a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and a member of the multidisciplinary Museum Design team for the Obama Presidential Center. She 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 of architecture at Cornell University and Washington University in St. Louis. She lives and works on Chicago's south side.
Amanda Williams | Speaker | TED.com