AMANI WILLIAMS
INTERVIEWED BY LILY HYON
AMANI WILLIAMS (b.1999, Columbus, Ohio) is a drawer and painter working in New York. Her illustrative, figurative drawings focus on blackness, girlhood, and coming-of-age. She has shown in a number of group and solo exhibitions, most recently Desire Lines at the SVA Flatiron Gallery. LILY HYON is a sculptural artist and writer interested in commodified pleasure. As Amani finished her body of thesis drawings, Lily sat down to chat about the work.
Lily Hyon: Your work alludes to different time periods and I think one of the biggest markers of time is through your character design. You specifically said in your most recent piece, the main character‘s outfit is “early 2000s”, whereas sometimes it speaks to a much older time in history.
Amani Williams: Recently, I’ve been fixated on pulling memories from my own life and merging them. The characters become fixed in time, in the way that a movie is. The narrative operates with how the characters are designed. It’s trying to remember that moment of “oh, I was wearing this piece of clothing or these shoes.” The characters are based on a version of myself, but also a collective image of Blackness and Black girlhood. What has been special about this body of work is that I could play and set them back in time to the Jim Crow era of 1865, and it can still be relevant to today. Bouncing between the now and the past feels deeply connected to what it means to be Black and a minority.
LH: I’ve also noticed that the boys or the men in your work are oftentimes snippets of identities that imply genders and power structures. They’re either turning their back away from the composition, or there’s a close up of a pantsuit and men’s shoes. Can you let me know what’s happening in the pool scene?
AW: The title of that piece is When I realized for the first time you and I were cursed or Pickaninny gets picked on at the pool. This piece in particular is me trying to make amends with my relationship with black boys and black men. Growing up, I had a lot of black men and black boys in my life who teetered the line between being heroes and villains. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to accept the fact that they can’t really be either. They’re people. I wanted a little boy who is one of the protagonists, given the same amount of care as she is. I softened him out so that he felt a little bit more playful. Especially with this body of work, it was important to sit somewhere in the gray area and there not being a straight answer for any of it. It would be easier if this little boy was just a villain, but he’s not. He’s also a child learning. That was something that I was pressured into learning very early. And it made it difficult for me to accept my own moments of victimhood, because I’m so used to being, “oh, well, this person didn’t mean to do it”. There’s trauma in that. These cyclical social structures are related to the power dynamics at play, and how they swing in and out.
LH: There’s always this two part title happening in your work, it’s like there’s two ways to see what is happening inside the frame.
AW: The titles are inspired by the animated TV show Black Dynamite (kind of like The Boondocks). Each episode usually has two titles for the major plot and subplot. I really liked the duality so I started using two titles as well. The first one usually speaks to the emotional content, and the second title speaks to what is actually happening. The characters being called “Mammy” and “Pickaninny” relate to historical depictions of Black girls and Black women, specifically more offensive ones. The pickaninny is a stereotype– she’s this mischievous, fast, dimwitted child that gets into too much. The mammy is similarly dimwitted, she’s happy to be working for the white man, wise in a way. She’s the forever caretaker. Those stereotypes that have been applied to me throughout my life, and having them in the title is, in a way, an acknowledgment but also a rejection of that. Because in the actual work, they end up being so much more than the stereo- types. They end up having these narratives that are so much more elaborate than whatever the stereotypes say that they are.
LH: You’re showing their life.
AW: Yeah, I thought, how do I talk about these stereotypes and then give them their humanity back? And this is me trying to do that in a way.
LH: Humanity...I love that. To go back to your work, I’m curious about the narrative in this piece of what seems to be a young girl pulled away from a man approaching her.
AW: I am excited. This will be my first drawing of teenagers. The title of this piece is called Your husband is going to love your legs or Jezebel learns to pick her battles. The original sketches for the piece were inspired by being non-consensually touched on the train. Depicting teenagers felt like a better transition, because this body of work is trying to track that transition from one state of being to the other. I wanted to have this girl in the middle. He’s not touching her yet, but he’s very close. The first part of the title is supposed to be in quotations so that it’s clear that those are his words.
LH: Wow, the introduction of quotations?
AW: I know– I wanted her to be making this very disgusted face. I have a bad habit of not being able to control my face when things happen. I’m always like this: [disgusted face].
LH: [Laughs] Same.
AW: I had envisioned the two girls out somewhere, just enjoying their time together in the springtime. She’s wearing these pink yoga pants (which I did not have), but I did have a pair of yoga pants. I vividly remember during the mid 2000s, how much of a thing it was, like “You can’t wear yoga pants outside. That’s what slutty women do.” [Laughs] I remember as a kid, I got boobs early and adults would comment that I was “top heavy” and I hated it. You go outside and forget that your body means something to someone else, and that my body is no longer innocent or a neutral ground for me to be a person anymore. There’s a part of the work between the two girls, where it’s concern and care, which I think is very important. I have a younger sister. I was often the “mom friend” or the friend that was constantly bugging people to do certain things. It’s because I had strict parents- well...strict in some ways.
LH: My parents were the same! And it was difficult to figure out the boundaries of what was okay and permissible and what was not. And is your family from Cleveland, Ohio? That was one of my next questions– your upbringing.
AW: I’m actually technically from Columbus. When it was time for me to go to college, I knew I wanted to do art. I decided to go to the Cleveland Institute of Art. I thought, “I’m going to switch from graphic design and I’m going to do animation and illustration”.
LH: That is what I wanted to ask you! It is pretty clear to me that you take inspiration from animation, even from your sketches where the format is in the language of a storyboard. What are some of your extracurricular influences?
AW: Growing up, my babysitter and I would watch Disney movies all day long until my parents would come to pick us up. My grand- mother, who passed away last year, had a huge DVD and VHS tape collection. My dad is also a big nerd. He loves comic books and he plays a lot of video games. And as a child, I would watch him play Halo and other video games all day long.
LH: Wow, this is eye opening. The early influences of your life are so clear in the work. But then you moved to New York. We should talk about that. How has New York influenced your work and life?
AW: I didn’t grow up with a big community of Black people outside of my family for me to hang out with. Being here has given me hope that I can have that and have good memories. I’m happy because it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to depicting what it feels like to be myself. One of the things I have been grappling with is talking about what it means to be a minority. I think that there’s a kind of Black art that people are expecting.
Amani Williams, When I realized you and I were cursed or Pickaninny gets bullied at the pool, 2026. Charcoal and graphite on paper, 42 in x 84 in.
LH: What do you personally want to see more in contemporary figurative painting or Black figurative painting? I do think there is a huge pressure that the image must somehow empower the viewer, where the artist is now responsible for making everyone feel better. Have white cube spaces collectively moved on and now immune to, you know... racism, misogyny and all these issues? How does your work position itself in this context?
AW: I think one of the things that I am trying to do is make the Black Art that I’ve been searching for. One of my undergrad teachers, Cooper, said the artist that you’re searching for is yourself.
LH: Oh my God.
AW: I know...I know. Quote from her.
LH: So you are the change that you want to see.
AW: Essentially. When she said that, I was like, damn. So I’ve been trying to make the work that I want to see. What I kind of struggle with is that Black Art feels... like a box to check. I’m not opposed to being in a box. I really enjoy being Black. I really enjoy the concept of a genre of art that explores what blackness is. I think it’s needed and necessary. My frustration is that I did feel pressured to make work that was positive and had the answers. Often people were like, “well, what do you think the fix to this problem is?” And I don’t know what the fix is. One of the things that I enjoy about my work is that there are no heroes and villains. They’re just people.
LH: I love that. One of the biggest strengths in your practice is how much it’s grounded in reality and it’s not necessarily trying to, as you said, absolve anything. You’re not afraid to show how things just are. I wrote down: ‘your work goes against the sanitized or palatable image of Black figuration that a wider audience might find easily digestible’.
AW: I do think that there is something to be gained in sanitizing black art– you know, money and a certain kind of prestige that relates to assimilation. It’s difficult for me because I never felt that I could have it in the first place.
LH: I find that interesting. You and I have very different intended audiences but our work both exposes the under- belly of things that people don’t really want to acknowledge anymore. And the people that are being represented may also not be happy with the representation, because we have to be empowered when we do not relate to what that means or feels.
AW: That’s exactly how I feel. What’s funny about it is that I had a lot of hesitation about making the little girl in the pool because I didn’t want to demonize or villainize black boys or black men because I have a complex relationship with them. That’s what’s hard about making work like this. What some of the risk is, the moments where I’m the most vulnerable, I don’t give everybody the prettiest version of these problems. A lot of times people want me to give more explanation of the story and sometimes I don’t have it.
LH: I actually love what you just said, because artists are now responsible for selling authenticity through trauma and how much trauma is linked to authenticity. Therefore the art must be good if the trauma is real.
AW: Yeah. I was telling E [Jane] that it feels like my trauma now has a safe place to live and for them to rest. There’s a way that I talk about trauma, where it’s not salacious, it’s not tantalizing, but it’s also not sanitizing it either. E was saying, “I’d like to think that the girls in your work are heroes.” I think that “heroes” gives them more of a job than what is necessary. They are people who are at the wrong place at the wrong time, which is more of what it’s like to be a person. That’s why I struggle when people ask, “what’s the narrative?” I make illustrative work because that’s kind of my taste... I really like Robin F. Williams’ work a lot. She’s been a huge inspiration for me for a very long time. I love when you can look at a work and you can feel it or hear it or smell it. Those things are impactful to me.
LH: I found it interesting that the way that you described your work and how it looks is similar to a scent. The summer lake and meadow, a splash of chlorine. Our readers might not know this but you have a huge obsession with perfume. Does scent tie into your practice?
AW: I think a lot of it is because scent is related to memory. My work is kind of baked into my memories of the moment. In my work, I don’t know if other people can feel it, but I can smell the chlorine. I can feel the stillness in the air. It’s these moments of trying to take this intangible thing and freeze it forever.
LH: You’re so aware. Not a lot of artists can explain the psychological affect of their work. So, what is the most important thing to you in your work?
AW: I would like my work to be the gamma, the whole range. I would like it if my work felt like the full expansiveness of what it means to be a Black woman and Black girl. I think that would be fantastic because there are still all these weird unknowns about what it means to be a Black girl, woman or teenager. It’s not my duty to represent those things, and it feels good to make work from that place. You don’t have to know what mammy or pickaninny means to get it. But the full range of what this means, and what that experience looked like is what I’m most interested in. In my artist statement, which I never used to do... I started talking about myself more. At the end of the statement, it says “if you can care for them, maybe you can care for me.” If you can care for these girls or the women, I think that you can care for me. That’s what I’m forcing people to do, to care about all of me and my family.
