KIYAN WILLIAMS

Working fluidly across sculpture, installation, performance, and public art, the artist Kiyan Williams has built a practice that unearths the historical, social, and ecological forces that shape the landscape, architecture, and iconography of the American project. In their elemental works the earth and weather are both protagonist and collaborator. 

Williams’ work has been exhibited across the country and internationally at: The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Hirshhorn (Washington D.C.), ICA Boston (Boston), The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield), MIT Vera List Center (Cambridge), Paula Cooper Gallery (New York), Peres Projects (Milan), Altman Siegel (San Francisco), Lyles and King (New York), SculptureCenter (New York), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), Art Omi (Ghent), and The Shed (New York). Their debut institutional solo exhibition, Between Starshine and Clay, was presented at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles) in 2022. In 2022 they presented their first public art work in New York City commissioned by Public Art Fund in the group exhibition Black Atlantic. Williams was included in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, Even Better Than the Real Thing.

Their work has been reviewed in numerous publications including Text Zer Kunst, Artforum, The New York Times: T Magazine, ArtNews, Frieze, BOMB Magazine, émergent magazine, and Mousse Magazine. They were recently profiled by The New York Times and Cultured Magazine. Williams is the recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship, Graham Foundation Grant, Franklin Furnace Fund, and Fountainhead Fellowship in Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. Williams earned a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. They live and work in New York City.