In Kiyan Williams’ elemental works the weather is both protagonist and collaborator. Using a distinct range of formal and material vocabularies that gesture toward the architectural, ecological, and corporeal - earth, plaster, steel, sandstone, chrome, and foodstuff - they make sculptures and installations appearing in states of suspended decomposition, alluding to both archeological ruins and speculative futures. Their practice is a meditation on the unruliness of ruination, the precarity and malleability of symbols and structures of power, how objects and the ideologies embedded within them are transformed and made anew by an entanglement of human and non-human forces. For Williams haptic intimacy is a primary mode of encounter. Their tactile works foreground materiality, process, touch, transformation, and embodied presence.
Their work has been exhibited across the country and internationally at: The Hirshhorn (Washington D.C.), MIT Vera List Center (Cambridge), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield), Paula Cooper Gallery (New York), Peres Projects (Milan), Altman Siegel (San Francisco), Lyles and King (New York), SculptureCenter (New York), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), Art Omi (Ghent), and The Shed (New York). Their debut institutional solo exhibition, Between Starshine and Clay, was presented at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) in 2022. In 2022 they presented their first public art work in New York City commissioned by Public Art Fund in the group exhibition Black Atlantic. Williams was included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing.
Williams’ work has been reviewed in numerous publications including Artforum, The New York Times: T Magazine, ArtNews, Frieze, BOMB Magazine, émergent magazine, and Mousse Magazine. They were recently profiled by The New York Times and Cultured Magazine. 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. They have been awarded residencies at Smack Mellon and BTFA. Williams earned a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University.
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