New York-based artist Rachel Eulena Williams uses rope, textiles, pigment, canvas, and more to create works that straddle the boundary between sculpture and painting. Her brightly coloured, abstract works take on a multidimensional materiality that challenges the traditional medium of painting.
Read MoreDrawing from prominent African American artists such as Betye Saar and Howardena Pindell, Rachel Eulena Williams is interested in the evolution of art history and how her work is situated within it. Her focus is on the 'reframing of art history,' challenging the hierarchical genre of painting as well as Western art history's traditional othering of colour.
Williams' works extend beyond a dualistic approach: she questions the boundaries between sculpture and painting; optimism and angst; rigidity and gentleness; lightness and weight; memory and history. Williams explores overarching structures, both literal and metaphorical. Her works are knotted, glued, or stitched together, but also painted with thick pigment that serves as a decorative element as well as a structural one.
Williams sews and paints canvases which she overlays and hangs from ropes. She is also interested in objects such as hammocks that bend like ropes. She looks for ways to experiment with perspective and to challenge traditional understandings, especially when using materials in unconventional ways.
Williams first begins by drawing, using these sketches as the groundwork for her assemblages. She then searches for materials that will stand in for the different marks and lines in her drawings. 'It's usually in my drawing that I am able to really see my ideas, even subconscious ones that I wish I could understand,' she explains. 'The drawing is almost a muse, with layers of imagery coming from multiple drawings.' Ropes and cords act as literal interpretations of the lines in her sketches, while also symbolising the connections that bring disparate elements together.
She directly paints onto raw canvas, which she then cuts up and rearranges to form her collaged pieces. Her experience in bookbinding and chine-collé inspires her experimental approach with non-painterly practices and material exploration, as well as the methods she uses to attach surfaces together, such as sewing, stapling, and gluing. Her process reflects both a sculptural approach, in which she has to consider concepts such as gravity and balance, and a painterly approach, which allows her to use colour as a storytelling mechanism.
Inspired by Black abstract expressionist painters such as Al Loving, Williams sheds light on the power colour has over materiality, as well as its ability to tell a story and express emotion. For her, colour is a major part of Black abstractionism and plays an important role in the reworking of art historical narratives.
She is also interested in the negative space that her works create and imagines the wall her assemblages hang on as a sheet of white drawing paper. She paints the back of her works as well so that the space between the work and the wall is extended, reflecting her interest in how both the artist and their work occupy space. From that point, she chooses a colour that resonates with her and tells a specific story.
Although abstract in form, some works such as Strange Woman, American Fruit (2021) suggest figural forms, with curves and shapes referencing the female body. Other forms allude to the natural world. In her 2022 exhibition Joy & Rain at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Williams focused on the motif of a raindrop, repeating blue-hued droplets across numerous works. In another series, Williams explores the snowstorms she experienced in the U.S. These works are imbued with cool tones in contrast with warmer hues. The artist uses snow as a metaphor for the series, as snow exists in a transformational state that can melt or be frozen.
Williams also explores the multiplicity of perceptions and how surrounding elements affect our understanding. Drawing from artists like Atsuko Tanaka, who experimented with the medium of painting through colourful, organic shapes, Williams is interested in how charts, graphs, circles, and lines can be used to represent the human condition.
Rachel Eulena Williams' work has been exhibited in both solo and group contemporary art exhibitions at The Modern Institute, Glasgow; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Pace Gallery, New York; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and Ceysson & Bénétière, Luxembourg, among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Rachel Eulena Williams's Instagram can be found here.
Gabrielle Leung | Ocula | 2022
