Art Research Residency: Levester Williams

Join Levester Williams (artist in residence at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture) for a conversation with collaborators Sheila Gaskins and Savannah Knoop on his current work in progress, “dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore” (2021–2024).

Levester Williams is a multimedia artist whose artistic production is rooted in explorations of the relationships between the material and social worlds. His sculptural work and multichannel video projects have been exhibited in museums and art spaces nationally and internationally. In the 2023–2024 academic year, Williams is making a series of visits to UMBC and Baltimore to complete a new filmic work under the project title “dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore.” Williams is researching the histories of Cockeysville (Maryland) marble, a material used in many salient objects in the local built environment, including the Washington Monument and iconic exterior steps of Baltimore rowhomes. The movement art documented in Williams’s film is an embodied consideration of the labor histories, and mythologies, surrounding this complex material. In Williams’s words, the project underscores the “intertwined history of African-Americans’ plight to self-determined agency and full citizenship, and a rather benign stone.”

The Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture hosts an exploratory research residency that allows artists and interdisciplinary collaborators to take advantage of scholarly resources and to build partnerships at UMBC and in the Baltimore region. Artists In Residence (AIRs) are invited to pursue open-ended outcomes, and their engagements may develop into workshops, artworks, or other future projects. Among the artists the CADVC welcomes this season is Tomashi Jackson.

For additional information, please visit the CADVC’s page on Artist Research Residencies.

Admission is free, but space is limited. Please rsvp here to reserve a space.