Amanda Williams, artist

I learned about Amanda Williams, a Chicago-born visual artist trained as an architect, while reading Eula Biss's Having and Begin Had, about consumer culture (book report will follow in a few days). She mentions Williams's Color(ed) Theory Series, an urban art project from 2016, in a chapter about paint chips. Here is a précis of Williams's project from the Art Institute of Chicago:

For her series Color(ed) Theory, Amanda Williams repainted and photographed eight vacated and condemned houses in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago, drawing attention to the issue of underinvestment in African American communities around the city. The artist painted the buildings in a palette of colors found in products and services marketed primarily toward Black people that she felt represented Black consumer culture: Harold’s Chicken Shack, Newport 100s, Crown Royal Bag, Flamin’ Red Hot Cheetos, Ultrasheen, Pink Oil Moisturizer, Currency Exchange, and Safe Passage.

Williams painted the houses with the help of family, friends, and other members of the community; their activity invited passersby to reflect on the complexities of race, place, and value in cities. The bright colors transformed buildings scheduled for demolition, which viewers might otherwise ignore, into sculptural objects. The series raises questions about the racial, social, and political forces shaping the city and their relationship to color: What color is poverty? What color is gentrification? It also highlights the racist history of urban strategies, including policies like redlining that have blocked Black Americans’ equal access to real estate and “white flight” out of cities and into suburbs.

Here is an interview about the project. And here are seven of the eight houses:

Harold's Chicken Shack

Flamin' Red Hots

Crown Royal Bag

Pink Oil Moisturizer

Ultrasheen

Currency Exchange

Loose Squares/Newport 100

At the 2018 Venice Biennale, Williams, together with Andres L. Hernandez and Shani Crowe, exhibited an "intervention" in the courtyard of the U.S. Pavilion ("Dimensions of Citizenship) titled Thrival Geographies (In My Mind I See a Line), citing the Harriet Tubman quote: "I seemed to see a line, and on the other side of that line were green fields, and lovely flowers, and beautiful white ladies, who stretched out their arms to me over the line, but I couldn’t reach them no-how. I always fell before I got to the line." Here and here are two articles about it (the second on "the cultural importance of braided spaces").

Thrival Geographies

Closer up: the exhibit is interactive

And a few other pieces by Williams:

Harriet's Refuge, 2017 (digital collage)

It's a Goldmine/Is the Gold Mine? 2016

There Is a Past Tense, 2006 (oil on panel diptych)

We Have Everything the Same (dipytych)

Pretend Is Water, Real Is This

You can see more of her work at her website.

Finally, here is a short video about Color(ed) Theory: