ARTIST

Sue Williams, Behind Every Great Man, 1992
Behind Every Great Man

Born in Chicago in 1954, Sue Williams first came to prominence in the early 1980s with her mixed-media works that both echoed and challenged the dominant postmodern feminist aesthetic of the time; employing explicit, cartoonish imagery and sarcastic texts to address issues of gender inequality, emotional abuse, and sexual violence against women. Since the 1990s, Williams’ work has shifted to a more abstract style, deconstructing traditional figuration by rendering body parts, genitalia, and internal organs as monochromatic, graffiti-like fields of intermingling forms.

Williams has had solo exhibitions at the Vienna Secession, Austria; the Geneva Center for Contemporary Art, Switzerland; and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; along with being included in three consecutive Whitney Biennials. She lives and works in New York City.