R. Treshawn Williamson USA, b. 1998

R. Treshawn Williamson is an essayist and multidisciplinary artist whose work is a meditation on the obstruction and surveillance of the lived experiences of African-Americans. He investigates the application of cultural re-imagination in the African Diaspora through the engagement of oral histories, post-colonial theory, folklore, and ethnomusicology. Materials and methods intersect in Williamson’s work in ways that allow the image or object to be a carrier of meaning. One example is a series of screenprinted tapestries that employ laborious studio processes and charcoal as a medium as reference symbolic references to Williamson’s family roots in the coal mining industry. Williamson earned his BFA in Visual Critical Studies and Interdisciplinary Studio Practices at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.