This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Art is a feast for the senses. With her work, Marianna Dixon Williams says she aims to gather what the senses might not easily explain.
“The wind for example — you know it’s there but can’t see it,” she says. “I like to go in the wild and capture data beyond what the senses can perceive.”
Credit: Sierra King
Credit: Sierra King
That practice has led to a win for the Augusta multimedia artist, who will represent Georgia at the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ spring 2024 exhibition in Washington, D.C.
Williams, who uses digital and organic elements to explore environmental processes of growth, is one of five women who were selected as finalists by the National Museum’s Georgia Committee for the exhibit “New Worlds: Georgia Women to Watch,” on view at Atlanta Contemporary through June 4.
Her pieces consider how environmental loss can give voice to identity. She measures the world digitally, she says, questioning the balance between human actions, interfaces and the environment.
“The way Marianna uses navigation as a tool to express what it means ‘to be’ in these worlds is thoughtful, intriguing and encapsulates what it means to find, return and take care of yourself,” says Sierra King, the Atlanta-based photographer and archivist who co-curated the Contemporary exhibit with curator and essayist Melissa Messina. “Her attention to detail and how every moving part belongs to the whole is impeccable.”
Credit: Mike Jensen
Credit: Mike Jensen
King says the exhibition became an exploration into the practices of extraordinary women based in Georgia. The other artists featured are Anila Quayyum Agha of Augusta, Namwon Choi of Savannah, Victoria Dugger of Athens, and Shanequa Gay of Atlanta.
“I enjoyed learning about the women artists that I didn’t know before,” King says. “We can become so isolated in our own communities that we often forget the many worlds that exist outside of our own.”
Women to Watch unites those worlds as an ongoing collaboration between the National Museum and its national and international chapters, increasing exposure for emerging and underrepresented women artists.
Williams hails from a family of musicians, poets and artists. “I am thankful for my community in Augusta, my family and chosen family there,” she says.” Growing up listening to stories and seeing this raw, diverse way to look at the world gave me the possibility to dream.”
She attended Brown University and received a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, then an MFA with a concentration in time-based and interactive media at the University of Pennsylvania. Art school was the first time she considered art as a career. Before that, it was mostly a safe space.
“In my history as a person, dealing with things like being gay was difficult,” she says. “Art was the place that I went to, like any angsty kid, with all the issues of the soul. That’s still a part of my work because you can’t separate culture, identity and history from the environment.”
Williams uses electronics to collect data directly from landscapes, then translates it into drawings, animation or other digitally fabricated elements.
On a sailing trip from Norway to Russia after college, for instance, she recorded the sound of glaciers over a period of time, then converted the sound file and etched it into paper discs with a sewing needle. The videos in the current exhibition start with that excursion.
“It’s a record of what was happening in the Arctic Circle at the time,” she says. “My work is about the memory of a place, but memory changes as the environment changes. The materials and documents which emerge from the physicality of my studio pilgrimages (are) a recognition of the impermanence of life as we pass through time.”
That stood out last summer with her acoustic location technology project in Augusta.
“I think about growing up here, having these dreams and fears at eight or nine years old. The memory of a place follows you your whole life,” she says. “I’m 30 now and mapping the city by sound waves helped me think about it differently.”
Williams says it’s an honor to work with so many women supporting women. “As women artists, we can’t separate ourselves from the politics of the world we live in. We can’t command the realities we crave, but we can use our work to tell stories and build bridges of empathy.”
She looks forward to meeting more women artists at the national event and continued participation in Women to Watch. “They do brave work,” she says. “Thinking of the experiences of women in art, I realize I can’t take this for granted. I’ll always acknowledge the people who fought for me.”
IF YOU GO
“New Worlds: Georgia Women to Watch”
Through June 4. Free. Atlanta Contemporary, 535 Means St. NW, Atlanta. 404-688-1970, atlantacontemporary.org.
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Angela Oliver is a proud native of old Atlanta who grew up in the West End. A journalism and Black studies graduate of Western Kentucky University, daily news survivor and member of Delta Sigma Theta, she works in the grassroots nonprofit world while daydreaming about seeing her scripts come alive on the big screen.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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