artist statement

antoine williams
rawgoods@gmail.com
704.458.6001

My multimedia practice meets at the intersection of cultural mythologies, critical black study, and surrealism as a means of exploring methods in which physical, mental, and emotional states of being exist within and in opposition to status-quo. I work with the notion of society as monstrous to question themes of power, class and the abject within their social, cultural, and political absurdities. Using the uncanny, I am reimagining cultural folklore and narrative in the context of present day late-stage capitalism. imaging contemporary folklore that challenges myths around American economic and capitalist prosperity, and their effects on black working-class people. This connects directly to my lived experience as someone who grew up as the child of factory workers in the rural south. The result is a process- based practice involving, painting, drawing, collage, installation, and assemblage. I use materiality and concept to weave futures, archives, radical imagining into speculative economies that investigate the complexities of contemporary working-class Black life.