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Chicago Architecture Biennial CAB

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Amanda Williams

Amanda Williams, Artist and Architect, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Chicago, IL

Chicago, United States

Website

Amanda Williams is an artist and architect who re-imagines public space to expose the complex ways that value, both cultural and economic, intersects with race in the built environment. Williams’ creatively uses color to visualize the ways urban zoning, land use, and disinvestment impact the lives of everyday residents, particularly in African American communities. Amanda has been widely recognized for her work including as a MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a USA Ford Fellow, a Joan Mitchell Foundation awardee and Public Art Dialogue awardee for achievement in the field of public art. Her work is in several permanent collections including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art. Williams received a BArch (1997) from Cornell University.

CAB 5 Contribution

Artist Amanda Williams joined South Side residents and the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative in planting 100,000 tulip bulbs at the intersection of 53rd and Prairie Avenue as part of her project "Redefining Redlining," which calls attention to the impact of the discriminatory lending practice that began across the country and created long-lasting devastation on the South and West sides.
Redefining Redlining by Amanda Williams. Photo: Sarah Hanson.
Redefining Redlining by Amanda Williams. Photo: Tom Harris

Project Overview

Redefining Redlining

Redefining Redlining is an ongoing installation by artist Amanda Williams in the Washington Park neighborhood of Chicago. In fall 2022, Williams and the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative led hundreds of volunteers in a mass planting of one hundred thousand red tulips at E. 53rd Street and S. Prairie Avenue. The bulbs were planted in plots that replicate the original footprint at full scale of the almost two dozen houses and buildings that once occupied the site. The artist chose tulips because of their history as a commodity in the Dutch Golden Era (1575–1675). During that time, frenzied speculation over the promised beauty the flowers led the bulbs to be sold for as much as the value of a home.

In the spring of 2023, a sea of red tulips bloomed for three weeks at the site. These floral footprints symbolize the social and financial value the neighborhood of Washington Park once held, honor the people living and working there now, and express hope for the beautiful Black neighborhoods that will be there in the future. The tulips will continue to bloom each spring, bringing a colorful burst of joy and also serving as a year-round outdoor classroom for local students and residents to gain agency through conversations about alternative approaches to equitable development.

Project team: Alana Berry, Marlease Bushnell, Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, Sarah Hanson, Sophie Lipman, Bianca Marks and Nick Raffel

Special thanks to Chicago Architecture Center, Jordan Grimes, Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts

CAB 1 Contribution

Project Overview

Color(ed)

Past Works

Redefining Redlining, 2022-ongoing. Volunteer activation of 100,000 tulip bulbs planted as a site specific installation in Washington Park neighborhood, Chicago. October 2022. Photo: Daris Jasper Photography, ©Amanda Williams, Courtesy the artist.
For Color(ed) Theory, Amanda Williams, along with family and friends, covertly painted empty houses slated for demolition in Chicago's Washington Park and Englewood neighborhoods. Each house was painted in a monochromatic color that held cultural associations immediately apparent to the neighborhood's predominantly Black residents. ©Amanda Williams, Courtesy the artist.
For Color(ed) Theory, Amanda Williams, along with family and friends, covertly painted empty houses slated for demolition in Chicago's Washington Park and Englewood neighborhoods. Each house was painted in a monochromatic color that held cultural associations immediately apparent to the neighborhood's predominantly Black residents. ©Amanda Williams, Courtesy the artist.

Project Overview

The City is the Site