Kira Joy Williams
Kira Joy Williams (she/they) is an artist, storyteller, and community builder based in Brooklyn, NY, on occupied Munsee Lenape land. She holds a BA and a Master's degree from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her multimedia artwork has been featured in solo and group exhibitions, including her 2022 thesis show Home is in the Stories in a Bedford Stuyvesant community garden, where she also served as Artist-in-Residence. Kira has co-curated Rest is Power (2023) and Morphology (2022) at NYU, and was a 2023 Create Change Artist-in-Residence with The Laundromat Project.
[Tann and Dad, 2021, 35mm photograph]
Kira Joy Williams
Courtesy of the artist
A father and his adult son hug, the son’s head resting heavily on the father’s shoulder, the father’s hands spread across the son’s back. Sunlight shines through the trees of the backyard in which they stand, illuminating their dark brown skin. The son wears a loose button down shirt and black pants and has a slight smile on his face, and the father, a head shorter, wears a button down shirt and jeans. They are framed by a screen door, partially open to the at once fleeting and everlasting embrace.
[Untitled, 2021, 35mm photograph]
Kira Joy Williams
Courtesy of the artist
Three people dressed in their Sunday best stand in the doorway of a church, the brown wood of the door framing their dark brown faces. The leftmost person, wearing a black pea coat and a face mask under her chin, displays her candy with a laugh, a wide smile revealing a gap in her teeth. The person in the middle is dressed in a gray suit and cradling a paper bag in the crook of his arm as he opens his candy, face mask covering his mouth and eyes, cheeks, and nose poised to begin a smile. The person on the right, displaying a bottle of iced coffee to the camera, wears an intricately patterned coat made of textured fabrics in shades of blues, a blue beaded necklace, blue hat, and a face mask covering her nose and mouth.