Kiyan Williams is an American visual artist who works across a range of media, including sculpture, performance, and installation.[1] By revisiting public sculpture[2] and national symbols,[3] Williams creates artworks that subvert dominant narratives of history, power, and American identity.[4] Williams lives and works in
Brooklyn, New York.[5]
Kiyan Williams is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses performance, sculpture, installation and media art, through which they subvert national symbols and traditional monumentality.[8] The artist adopts everyday materials and unconventional methods[9] to uproot the hegemonic narratives of domination that monuments typically celebrate. Embracing fragments and fissures, Williams’ works recall ancient ruins or relics in a state of decay that also hold capacities for resilience.[10] By making, unmaking, and remaking,[11] the artist creates embodied works that both fill historical gaps and question power dynamics. Soil, in particular, is a recurring material and metaphor that Williams uses to delve into American history and identity,[12] thus unearthing the historical and ongoing forces that have shaped, and tightly tied together, bodies and land.[13]
Williams is the recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship,
Graham Foundation Grant, Franklin Furnace Fund, and Fountainhead Fellowship in Sculpture and Extended Media at
Virginia Commonwealth University.[28] Williams has been awarded residencies at
Smack Mellon and BTFA.[29]
Selected talks and lectures
Captcha: Dancing, Data, and Liberation: Rashaad Newsome, Kiyan Williams, Saidiya Hartman, Aimee Meredith Cox, Arthur Jafa, and Tavia Nyong'o in Conversation, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY, 2022[30]
What the soil remembers: Kiyan Williams and Kathryn Yusoff, NYU GSAS Music Colloquium Series, New York University, New York, NY, 2021[30]
Art and Soil: Artist Talk with Kiyan Williams, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., 2020[30]
Summer of Know: Kiyan Williams and Ericka Hart in Conversation, Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 2019[30]
Marlon Riggs & “No Regret”: Disclosure, Performativity, & Legacy: Kiyan Williams, Ni’Ja Whitson and Tavia Nyong’o In Conversation, The 8th Floor, New York, York, 2017[30]