In the Artist's Studio | Sandy William IV

Sandy Williams IV is an artist and educator whose work generates moments of communal catharsis. Their conceptual practice uses time itself as a material and aims to unfold the hidden legacies of public spaces. Through ephemeral, malleable, and collaborative public memorials, Williams’ work unsettles popular 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 theUniversity of Richmond
Recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts COVID Fellowship, the New York CommunityTrust Van Lier Fellowship. Solo shows at 1708 Gallery (Richmond), the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Ontario), Reynolds Gallery (Richmond), and Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville).Selected Group Exhibitions and Performances: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach, The Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art, The Harnett Museum, Institute ofContemporary Art at VCU, Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), Martos Gallery (NYC), M+B Gallery (LA), de boer Gallery (LA), Springsteen (Baltimore), NADA House (NYC). Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (FL), SOMA (CDMX), ACRE (Chicago), Mildred’s Lane (NY) and the University of Cumbria (UK).