Rachel Eulena Williams’ Cascading Canvas Assemblages

Rachel Eulena Williams is a big believer in the freedom of play. Her practice plays with the boundaries of mediums, the materials themselves, and the negative space surrounding us.

This month, the American artist invites us to see her new body of work at her first major solo exhibition at a British institution.

Hair and Body (26 August–19 November 2023) at Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland features Williams’ exuberantly coloured assemblages in all their tactile glory. With their paint-soaked strips of rope and canvas cascading from the ceiling, there’s a sense of in-betweenness to these works, with the tangle of texture and colour existing somewhere between painting and sculpture.

Williams critiques the feminine beauty ideal. The exhibition title, ‘Hair and Body’ is a reference to two things that women are continuously judged on. In Swing in Protective Style (2022), Williams invites us to sit on a swing made from braided ropes, which references a common way of caring for Black hair.

The exhibition offers us a chance to see Williams’ savvy use of space, as her large-scale installations dramatically disrupt the gallery’s skylit expanse.

Main image: Rachel Eulena Williams, Watered down, kind expressions (2023). Canvas, cotton, rope, nylon thread, wood, acrylic paint, screws on stretcher. 152.4 x 259 cm. Courtesy the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow. Photo: Adam Reich.