REVIEWS
Dawoud Bey: Elegy | CAA.reviews | Author | 2024 |
Artist Sandy Williams asks what makes a monument | SF Examiner | Artist | 2024 |
PRESS
A Wax Statue of Lincoln Melted Into a Meme | The New York Times | 2024 |
Abe Lincoln wax sculpture melts in brutal DC heat | BBC | 2024 |
Scorching Heat Wave Turns Lincoln Wax Statue Into a Hot Mess | Hyperallergic | 2024 |
Abraham Lincoln Has Melted | New York Magazine | 2024 |
A wax sculpture of Abe Lincoln was no match for D.C.’s punishing heat | Washington Post | 2024 |
Video shows wax Lincoln sculpture melted after 'wild heat' hits DC | USA Today | 2024 |
Sandy Williams uncovers the rich narratives of Black and Indigenous communities | FRED.fm | 2024 |
The Shed’s Open Call 2023 Group Exhibition, NYC (Review) | ARTEFUSE | 2023 |
Between Artists: Cathy Lin Che, Christopher Radcliff, & Sandy Williams IV | The Shed | 2023 |
I Am Sandy Williams IV | The Shed | 2023 |
Strengthening the Statue of Liberty | Richmond Magazine | 2023 |
University of Richmond Professor… | Newsroom University of Richmond | 2023 |
Art professor traces history in the New York sky | UR Now | 2023 |
Richmond’s Last Confederate Statue Comes Down | Hyperallergic | 2022 |
Assembly 2022 | The Washington Post | 2022 |
Contemporary Exhibition Inspired by the Sacred Leaves One Changed | the Offing | 2022 |
Eyes up: Sculpture professor uses the sky as a canvas | URNow | 2022 |
Baltimore's Best Art Exhibits of 2021 | BmoreArt | 2021 |
Sandy Williams IV and Monsieur Zohore at Springsteen | Art Viewer | 2021 |
Questions of Faith in Art, self and religion |San Francisco Examiner | 2021 |
More Than a Candle: Sandy Williams IV’s Wax Monuments | RVA Mag | 2020 |
Sandy Williams IV: A reimagining of our shared history | The Williams Record | 2020 |
In the Studio: Sandy Williams IV | Reynolds Gallery | 2020 |
From the archives: Sandy Williams IV | OSMOS Online | 2019 |
How cleaning a statue became alums most provocative performance | VCUarts | 2019 |
BIO
Sandy Williams IV is an artist and educator whose work generates moments of communal catharsis. Williams’ conceptual practice uses time itself as a material and aims to unfold legacies and dynamics hidden within popular historical narratives, the landscape of shared public spaces, and amongst our collective memories. Through ephemeral, malleable, and collaborative public memorials, Williams’ work unsettles colonial logics of permanence, uniformity, and displacement. This work creates participatory paths for communal engagement informed by targeted research and site-specificity: holding space for disenfranchised public memories and visualizing frameworks of emancipation and shared agency.
While aesthetically Williams’ work flirts with minimalism, the practice is deeply interdisciplinary, and carefully layers contextual research, communal activity, collaboration, civic action, and performance. Their projects expand beyond the limits of the gallery toward public space: places of education and worship, fashion, virtual portals, and even upward to the sky. Williams’ work is guided by generations of freedom fighters who have dared to unsettle global colonial practices and the visible and invisible structures that sustain them.
BA - The University of Virginia
MFA - Virginia Commonwealth University, Sculpture + Extended Media
Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Richmond
Recipient of the 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship. Solo shows at 1708 Gallery (Richmond), the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Ontario), Roanoke College (Salem, VA), Telematic Arts (SF), Reynolds Gallery (Richmond), and Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville). Work featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, and BBC. Collaborations: Creative Time, CulturalDC, Weeksville Heritage Center. Selected Group Exhibitions and Performances: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, The Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art, The Harnett Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU, The Shed (NYC), Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), Grounds For Sculpture (NYC), Martos Gallery (NYC), M+B Gallery (LA), de boer Gallery (LA), Springsteen (Baltimore), NADA House (NYC). Artist in Residence at McDowell (NH), MASS MoCA (MA), Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), SOMA (CDMX), ACRE (Chicago), and the University of Cumbria (UK).