Brittney Leeanne Williams’ emotive figures bend and mold in exhaustion and abundance, the deeply hued red creating an emotive landscape. The body becomes the blueprint through which negative space and depth become apparent in the canvas, created by arched forms of back, breast, and legs to develop an architectural landscape. The arched back without a face becomes a vessel through which to explore a universal experience of memory and trauma related to being a woman and feminine and Black identity. Williams has noted that red derives from the pulsing light of ambulances in Chicago: “I think the reason the body became red was from being back in the city where there were ambulance sirens […] This red, pulsing light had the ability to choreograph the pace of a street. It could get people to stop, this red siren was a signal that forced recognition. So I wanted that for the black female experience, for the women, for myself, when thinking about this urgent state.”i
