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Gerald Williams USA, b. 1941
Emmett Till, 2026Acrylic on canvas60 x 48 x 1 1/2 in.
(152.4 x 121.92 x 3.81 cm)9497Further images
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Created as a meditation on one of the defining tragedies of the American civil rights movement, Gerald Williams’ portrait Emmett Till, 2026 is grounded in a history that is also...Created as a meditation on one of the defining tragedies of the American civil rights movement, Gerald Williams’ portrait Emmett Till, 2026 is grounded in a history that is also personally proximate. Williams attended the same grade school in Chicago as Emmett Till, the same age and in the grade directly below him. He recalls learning of Till's horrendous murder on his fourteenth birthday, an event that collapsed the distance between personal time and national history: a classmate from his community became the subject of one of the most enduring images of racial violence in the United States. This convergence became central to the pursuit of equal justice through the early works of AfriCOBRA into this most recent meditation. Rather than treating Till as an archival figure, Williams constructs his image through layered fields of color, rhythm, and accumulation breathing light, and noise into his image. Assembled through Williams' processes that echo the instability of memory itself, the portrait of Emmett Till operates as both icon and a deeply personal reckoning.Provenance
Artist's Studio Woodlawn, Chicago
Kavi Gupta Chicago
Exhibitions
Gerald Williams: Screaming at the Sky, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL, USA 2026
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