What Black Is This You Say?Amanda WilliamsLabel: MIT PressDescription: An illustrated anthology of texts on artist Amanda Williams edited in collaboration with Camille Bacon.What Black Is This You Say? by Amanda Williams convenes a broad set of contributors to respond to her own eponymous public artwork at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City (2021–2023). In this collection the 17 colors and captions that appeared on the facade of Storefront—the project began as a series of Instagram posts of different hues of black paired with witty and incisive comments on the multiplicity of Black culture—are expounded upon in poems essays and prose. With this anthology Williams deliberately departs from traditional art criticism by gathering an intimate ensemble of her peers friends and collaborators including Roxane Gay Corinne Bailey Rae and J Wortham to comment on her work.What Black Is This You Say? is the first title in a new series titled Groundworks produced in conjunction with Storefront for Art and Architecture. Storefront founded in 1982 is known for its commitment to challenging and reframing the relationship between public and private space. In 1993 the gallery commissioned a project by the artist Vito Acconci and architect Steven Holl that replaced the exterior façade with a series of 12 movable panels that open the entire length of the gallery to the street enabling endless possibilities of entry navigation and absorption into the gallery space.
