2. Amanda Williams

Chicago-based visual artist Amanda Williams uses colour to illustrate the ways race informs the value we assign to spaces. Her exhibitions, which have taken place at the Venice Architecture Biennale, MOMA in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, challenge viewers to look at urban landscapes in new ways. She credits her training as an architect at Cornell University for honing her unique appreciation for space. One of Williams’ most notable works to date, Color (ed) Theory (left), explores how definitions of colour can be reimagined through Black culture. The project comprised a series of eight houses slated for demolition in Chicago’s Englewood neighbourhood. By repainting them in colours she felt represented Black culture and photographing them, Williams drew attention to the underinvestment in African American communities across the city. Later this year, Williams will be part of a group exhibition ‘Social Works II’ at Gagosian London and will have a standalone booth at Art Basel Miami Beach with Rhona Hoffman Gallery. ‘I feel fortunate to be able to ask very difficult and troubling questions about why Black people around the globe still have to fight daily just to exist. It’s a spatial question, but also one that art, design and architecture play a part in fostering,’ says Williams. awstudioart.com