From artist Amanda Williams’ perspective, the brutality experienced by Black people at the hands of the police is nothing new. To her, it’s “just another day, just like it’s been for the last 45 years of my life.” What does feel new now, however, is the widespread outrage and protest that George Floyd’s killing—and other acts of police violence—have prompted around the world. “All of a sudden it’s become urgent for everyone else. That seems very strange and foreign, and kind of like a dream.” Williams, who earned her B. Arch. from the Cornell University School of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), deals with the complexities of race, place, and value in her work, which has been featured in the U.S. Pavilion of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the 2016 Chicago Architecture Biennial. The realities of systemic racism that much of the world has just awoken to are the constants in both her art and daily life.
Based in Chicago, where she was born and raised, Williams was aware of the relationship between race and urban design from a young age; a fact that shaped her path as an artist. “Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. When you grow up in a place like this, where there are invisible lines that you should not cross, places that don't belong to you, then your whole perception of the way the world operates is the grid,” she says. “Architecture seemed like the vehicle that made sense to tell these stories [about race], because architecture formed who I was. My limitations and movements were formed by planners, designers, and society telling me that there were places that I should and should not be before I was even born.”
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