Of Requeims and Reliquaries, Chicago Art Department, Chicago IL 2015
of REQUIEMS and RELIQUARIES: work by AMANDA WILLIAMS explores new threads of inquiry related to her ongoing Color(ed) Theory project. For the past year, Amanda has been painting abandoned houses on the South Side with a highly specific, culturally coded color palette. For this exhibition she will create works that appropriate the idea of a requiem and a reliquary as metaphors for the houses she has objectified through her paint practice. What are the rituals associated with the life cycle of these structures in these blighted landscapes? How can spaces that have been deemed to have no value and structures marked for demolition be deified or exalted in status? In what way are they relics? In what way is Amanda’s practice a celebration of the end as well as the beginning? How might the detritus of these neglected structures be elevated to a more valuable status by imagining them as relics and not rubbish?
