2018

Carol Rashawnna Williams

Carol Rashawnna Williams was born in Topeka, Kansas into a military family. She lived in Germany until the age of 11, when her family relocated to Tacoma. A graduate of Evergreen State College, Carol resides in the TK Lofts in Pioneer Square and works to mentor emerging artists from various backgrounds. Carol believes in the power of art to build community, bridge community relationships, and create authentic space for healing. A large body of her work deals with environmentalism, PNW conifers, old growth trees, endangered animals, and climate change. Last year, one of her interactive installations, Healing Forests, was presented in Occidental Park as part of the Seattle Urban Design Festival.

From her statement for the grant:

My art serves no capitalist agenda. It's never been my main concern to make money off of my art. It IS the interdisciplinary, engaged and questioning approach: a collective approach, as I make art for, about, with and by the people, always! When I rise, those around me rise. I make discourse pushing the boundary between what art is expected of ‘Blackness,’ ‘Females,’ gender identity, varied abilities, topics of political & climate change. 20+ years in this discourse, I have been told my art is not black enough, gender specific enough and not critical to a conversation of democratic evaluation. Western civilization has yet to categorize my art as it can not be categorized. There is no place for the art I do, yet I have forced it into the gallery, the space of protest, educational campus’, conferences, corporate meeting spaces and other spaces of unexpected mainstream values/venues. My work is not objectified, it is uncategorizable. This brings difficult questions, that Western society would rather not address, see, or tend to. I attend to what no-one wants to tend to. My work sits in the shadow state of being, of discourse itself, which allows it to NOT be objectified or commodified. In this liminal space, it becomes okay to question, to dialog, to float between the scale of the non-conformative greys.

My work is ‘This & That,’ Both ‘And’ More...20 to 30 years ahead of its time, with concepts/ideologies that can not be encapsulated in current philosophies of western art. Inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs,indigenous totems and asian line work, my artwork forces you to feel organic, feel nature, feel the very energy of growth itself. Because, a large body of my work deals with nature, conifers, old growth trees, endangered animals and climate change, curators assume that I am not speaking to concerns related to ‘their ideals’ of ‘blackness.’ If according to Western ideologies, as a ‘black person’ objectified by capitalism and western ideas of ‘othering,’ then ALL of my work/ identity IS black art. Colonizations’ ‘climate change’ and ‘patriarchal paradigms,’ is directly tied to a capitalist system that has raped, dismantled and left unsustainable the African American by charges of slavery, prison industrial complex, internalized oppression and the hate of oneself. The un-equitable system of capitalism has rendered the global south unsustainable and left it purge to climate change. Thru the disappearance of animals relegated to endangered species lists, so too is the parallel plight of the African American, currently being displaced, gentrified, disappeared and targeted by labels of ‘felony.’ My artwork speaks directly to ALL these, intentionally & unintentionally...through shadows of statement, imagery and blatentant technique. Technique? Told by painters my large scale mono-prints are NOT paintings, yet by printmakers, they are NOT prints, the technique itself is foreign to both traditional art forms. The work I do is not always accepted by establishment, not always easy or understood. My work exists in a realm of the unplaceable, undefined and the unaccepted.

Visit the artist's website.