Audrey Williams

← Return to Colossal Wait: 2022 Senior Art Exhibition

 

 

The work I produce is a counterargument to the pressures and demands that modern culture imposes upon us, as well as the ones we inflict upon ourselves. I create portraits highlighting the mundane, the ugly, and the boring, celebrating and memorializing these qualities as ideas worth exploring. I attempt to undo some of the damage done to young people in our anxiety-ridden and information-saturated world. The inspiration for my portraits is often drawn from body dysmorphia. My experiences with trichotillomania and OCD can cause me to focus on imperfections. In my work, I explore these flaws and incorporate my own experiences with the impositions placed on young women by society and mass media on a daily basis. My portraits amplify features such as pores, cuts, bruises, and asymmetry. The supersized scale of the works serves to illustrate the monumental impact these features can have. These works are not an attempt to find beauty in the ugliness, but rather to celebrate ugliness and imperfection as concepts in their own right. Through these works, I encourage viewers to let go of some of their self-consciousness. As a young woman with the ability to produce realistic representations of the human form, I feel compelled to create alternatives to the mainstream images we are force-fed through popular media.

Instagram

Back to top