Amanda Williams

Williams’ gold brick installations that were featured in the show examined the evolution of urban landscape and questioned the legitimacy of how we assess the value of architecture in declining neighborhoods. With the help of family members and friends, William's painstakingly painted imitation gold-leaf onto locally sourced bricks from the demolished remains of the Color(ed) Theory houses. In It’s a Gold mine/ Is the Gold Mine? a stack of bricks painted gold are displayed on an artist-made pallet. By using bricks from demolished buildings, Williams attaches commercial and conceptual value to salvaged material deemed useless in their previous contexts. Painting them gold and leaving them on display in art museums adds another level of prestige and merit to the objects’ worth, alluding to the historic significance of the "gold standard." William plays with desire and access in She’s Mighty Mighty, Just Letting’ It All Hang Out, where a golden brick wall completely blocks off one of the gallery entrances. There was also a room barred by stacks of gold bricks, inaccessible to viewers aside from a small opening, although William's arranged for residents of Englewood to have exclusive access to it. The gold bricks were an extension of her project Color(ed) Theory, and highlight how demolition and renewal can shape the lives of urban populations, raising difficult questions about social and political undertones in Chicago.

Amanda Williams, with Olalekan Jeyifous, was awarded the commission for the public monument that will honor Shirley Chisholm, slated for Prospect Park, Brooklyn on April 24, 2019.

For her first solo-show, which ran in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, from July 18 to December 31 in 2017, the artist presented work responding to changes in contemporary urban spaces. The show featured sculptures and photography that focused on the relationship between context and material value. Williams asked viewers to consider the social, political and racial narratives which contribute to the devaluation of a neighborhood. Although her work focused specifically on neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side, the ideas are applicable to nearly every modern urban landscape.

Her most famous project, Color(ed) Theory, which debuted at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015, was met with critical acclaim for its confrontational look at race and space in the South Side of Chicago. Between 2014 and 2016, Williams repainted eight vacated and condemned houses in the Englewood neighborhood with the help of friends and family members. The artist chose eight colors she felt best represented black consumer culture specific to the South Side of Chicago, including Harold's Chicken Shack red, Newport 100's teal, Crown Royal Bag purple, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos orange, Ultrasheen conditioner blue, Pink Oil moisturizer, Currency Exchange yellow, and Safe Passage yellow. The bright colors converted the desolate, abandoned homes into sculptural objects, drawing attention to the issue of underinvestment in black communities and the corresponding decline of those neighborhoods. The project was displayed as a series of photographs.

Williams was born in Evanston, Illinois and grew up in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, attending the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools for high school. She received her Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University in 1997, where she was a member of the Quill and Dagger society, and worked for a commercial architecture firm in San Francisco for six years before returning to Chicago to pursue art full-time.

Amanda Williams (born 1974) is a visual artist based in Bridgeport, Chicago. Williams grew up in Chicago's South Side and trained as an architect. Her work investigates color, race, and space in the city while blurring the conventional line between art and architecture. In addition, she has taught at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Cornell University and has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New Museum.