OAKWOOD ARTS’ 2021-22’ ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCe
Sandy williams IV
Oakwood Arts is excited to welcome SOLSTICE IV artist, Sandy Williams IV, as our next artist-in-residence. Williams is an artist and educator based in Richmond, Virginia, whose work is about the persistence of memory, the body, and resistance. Williams writes, ”My practice is in tasking audiences with agency, in order to generate both public and private opportunities for collaborative engagement. I’m in pursuit of the threads that connect our diasporic origin stories to the official record, to our colloquial histories, and to the current worlds we now find ourselves in. This work helps root identity in the place where it comes from – the love, the ancestors, the loss, the land, the lies, the ideas, the repression, the representation, the violence – home.”
“I am an artist and educator based in Richmond, VA. My work is about the persistence of memory, the body, and resistance. My practice is in tasking audiences with agency, in order to generate both public and private opportunities for collaborative engagement. I am pursuing the threads that connect our diasporic origin stories to the official record, to our colloquial histories, and to the current crises that we now find ourselves in. This work helps root a social identify in the place that it comes from – the love, the ancestors, the loss, the land, the lies, the ideas, the repression, the representation, the violence – home. I make efforts in visualizing pathways towards the emancipation of our physical, conceptual, and emotional landscapes, and work both within and outside of the institution in order to clarify, to make transparent, to undo some of the temporal manipulations and spatial paradigms of oppression that exist in and all around us. I want to constantly reimagine of our potential as a society to promote healing as a cultural ideal. The work is persistence in opposition to permanence, to inspire functional histories for liberated social spaces in real-time.”
Williams graduated from the University of Virginia with a BA, and earned an MFA in VCUarts Sculpture + Extended Media department. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Richmond. Residencies include ACA (Florida), MassMOCA (Massachusetts), SOMA (Mexico City), ACRE (Chicago), The University of Cumbria (UK), among others. Recent exhibitions include Reynolds Gallery (Richmond), de boer Gallery (LA), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), New Release (New York), Springsteen Gallery (Baltimore), Project Gallery V (New York), 1708 Gallery (Richmond), Guadalajara 90210 (Mexico City). Williams is currently exhibiting at the University of Richmond Museum, and at NADA House in NYC. Upcoming solo at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington.
A Message from Sandy Williams IV
Hey! My name is Sandy Williams IV and I am excited to be starting as Oakwood’s artist in residence this year. Our goal is to facilitate a number of different community centered projects, so stay tuned, and if you’re interested in working with us, please reach out!
palo gallery exhibition: Primordial
September 23 - November 6.
Oakwood’s Artist in Residence @the_sandyman_can and several other talented artists showed a collection of works that questions the civility and primitiveness in NYC at the Palo Gallery. Sandy brought their beautifully unique perspective of manifestations of learned fear on display until Nov 6!
PLAY†PREY: The Old Testament
October 9th - December 11th, 2021
Wax Monument VII (Free Wax 2.2)
