Brittney Leeanne Williams
: To Tarry in Prayer
 To Terri in Prayer
2754 S La Cienega Blvd Los Angeles, California 90034
Saturday, September 7 at 5:00 PM 8:00 PM
Ends Oct 26, 2019
In this work, Williams draws on the biblical Book of Ruth to explore the mother-daughter relationship. While these works reference the characters of Naomi and Ruth, the metaphysical red figures aren’t meant to portray specific individuals, rather, they speak to a collective experience–an experience of womanhood and of Blackness. Rather than constructing Blackness through “black” skin, Williams uses red as a disruption that allows the figures to be read beyond the biases and assumptions placed on black bodies. The color red becomes a strategic apparatus, a marker of urgent exhaustion. Similar to an ambulance’s pulsing red light, the bodies command the viewers’ gaze. The bodies’ urgent state, its need, and its humanity, all become most legible through the figures’ vibrant skin. In their state of red, figures embrace, wrestle and anchor themselves to the ground.