Kandis Williams

The inaugural volume in a new series of books, Kandis Williams documents the Los Angeles–based artist’s exhibition A Line. Interrogating issues of race, nationalism, authority, and eroticism, her topical work is made across collage, sculpture, and video.

Williams draws on her background in dramaturgy to envision a space that accommodates the biopolitical economies that inform how movement might be read. Looking at the interconnections between popular culture and myth, she relates in her work anatomy, regions of Black diaspora, and communication and obfuscation. Williams’s body of work shapes an alternative language that examines how Black moving bodies are regarded. Williams continues to make visible the inexpressible violence Black bodies have been subjected to in dance and beyond.

Featuring contributions by the curator of 52 Walker—a David Zwirner gallery space—Ebony L. Haynes and the artist and writer Hannah Black, and a stirring conversation between Williams and the choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili, the book serves as an extension of the exhibition. Included are high-quality illustrations of the artworks alongside rich archival materials.

About the Clarion Series
The series title Clarion is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. The series captures 52 Walker’s gallery program ethos; a commercial, kunsthalle-like, gallery where shows run for several months, it focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. Envisioned by Haynes with the aim “to highlight and expand on the shows’ conceptual theses through newly commissioned critical texts, interviews, archival material, and artistic interventions,” Clarion will be a crucial touchpoint for those interested in engaging further with its artists’ practice.