Antoine Williams’ practice is an investigation of power, perception, semiotics, and fear as they relate to institutional inequities. Influenced by sci-fi literature from such authors as Octavia Butler and H.P. Lovecraft, Williams has created a mythology, concerning the complexities of contemporary Black life. Through mixed-media installations, paintings, drawings, and collages, he has created a mythos populated with beings that are born out of the fragility of what Ta-Nehisi Coates refers to as the “dream.” In addition, Williams is interested in making the personal, public, and draws from his own experiences from a rural, working-class upbringing in North Carolina that relate to wider contemporary concerns of race, class and masculinity. Inspired by a poem by Amiri Baraka, these beings live in the intangible spaces that exist within the contradictions of the human condition.
