Angharad Williams has emerged as one of the most distinctive voices in the world of contemporary art. A Welsh-born, Berlin-based artist and writer, her practice spans installation, sculpture, painting, video, and performance. What makes her work compelling is not only the diversity of mediums she employs but also the depth of ideas she explores. Her art engages with themes of authority, speech, class, humour, and the complex relationship between human and non-human worlds. Over the past decade, Williams has exhibited widely across Europe, gaining critical recognition for her inventive and often challenging pieces.
Early Life and Influences
Born on the island of Ynys Môn (Anglesey) in Wales, Angharad Williams grew up surrounded by a landscape steeped in myth, folklore, and industrial histories. This upbringing has informed much of her sensibility as an artist. The rugged coastlines and deep cultural heritage of Wales provided a grounding in storytelling and symbolism, both of which have found their way into her later works. Moving to Berlin allowed her to situate herself within one of Europe’s most dynamic artistic hubs, a city known for its experimental energy and openness to interdisciplinary practices.
Her dual identity—Welsh roots combined with Berlin’s international perspective—creates a rich tension in her work. This tension allows her to explore themes of belonging, displacement, and the structures of power that shape societies. By drawing on these contrasting contexts, Williams crafts art that resonates both locally and globally.
Artistic Practice and Themes
Williams’s art is fundamentally interdisciplinary. Rather than restricting herself to a single form, she weaves together performance, video, painting, and large-scale installations. Her work often pushes against conventional boundaries, forcing viewers to confront unsettling juxtapositions or ambiguous narratives.
Central to her practice are recurring themes:
Authority and Control: Williams frequently examines how authority manifests in social structures, language, and everyday life.
Speech and Communication: The power of language—both spoken and written—appears regularly, questioning how communication can liberate or oppress.
Class and Society: Her art often critiques social hierarchies, exploring how class divisions are maintained or subverted through culture.
Human and Non-Human Relations: The blurred boundaries between human agency and non-human forces, such as technology or the natural world, are key to her installations and performances.
What unites these themes is her ability to use humour, irony, and surrealism. Rather than didactic statements, her works often unfold like puzzles, inviting multiple interpretations.
Notable Exhibitions
Over the years, Angharad Williams has staged numerous solo exhibitions and participated in significant group projects. Each exhibition reveals a new facet of her evolving artistic vision.
Picture the Others – MOSTYN, Wales (2022)
This exhibition marked her first major institutional solo show in Wales. It combined installation, performance, film, painting, and sculpture. The title itself encouraged viewers to reflect on questions of identity and perception: who is the “other” and how do we position ourselves in relation to them? A reading room complemented the installations, underscoring Williams’s interest in language and literature as part of her practice.
Eraser – Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2022)
“Eraser” explored ideas of memory, destruction, and reconstruction. Large-scale charcoal drawings of vehicles, alongside video works, created a haunting environment. This exhibition illustrated Williams’s capacity to turn ordinary objects—like cars—into carriers of cultural meaning, laden with stories of violence, mobility, and power.
Berlin Straße – Schiefe Zähne, Berlin (2024)
In this show, Williams turned her gaze to the urban environment of Berlin. Through installations that echoed the rhythms of city streets, she dissected the way architecture and urban planning shape human behaviour. The works reflected the lived reality of Berlin as both a cosmopolitan city and a site of deep social divides.
New Technology – Fanta, Milan (2023)
This exhibition investigated society’s reliance on technology and the subtle ways in which it transforms our interactions and values. Williams used installation and video to highlight the contradictions of technological advancement, where convenience is often coupled with surveillance and loss of intimacy.
What Are We In Now??? – Kin, Brussels (2025)
Her most recent solo show posed a direct question to viewers: what is our current state, socially and politically? The installations and performances in this exhibition created a sense of disorientation, echoing the uncertainty of the times we live in.
Publications and Writing
In addition to her visual work, Angharad Williams is a writer. Her book Eraser (2023) was published by After8 Books in Paris, expanding on the ideas she explored in the Düsseldorf exhibition of the same name. The book combines drawings, photographs, and essays, offering readers a chance to engage with her art in a more intimate format.
Williams has also contributed essays and critical texts to art journals and collaborative projects. Her writing mirrors her visual practice: sharp, insightful, and unafraid to challenge dominant narratives.
Collaborative Projects and The Wig
Collaboration is central to Williams’s practice. She co-founded The Wig, an artist-run project in Berlin, alongside Gianmaria Andreetta and Richard Sides. This initiative has created opportunities for experimental exhibitions, performances, and discussions, both in Germany and abroad. The Wig embodies Williams’s commitment to creating alternative platforms outside of mainstream institutions, a stance that reflects her broader critique of cultural hierarchies.
Teaching and Influence
Williams has served as a guest teacher in the Masters in Fine Art programme at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in Zurich. Her role as an educator allows her to share her interdisciplinary approach with younger artists, encouraging them to think critically about the social dimensions of their work.
Her influence extends beyond the classroom. By combining Welsh identity with Berlin’s artistic milieu, she inspires other artists who straddle different cultures and contexts.
Collections and Recognition
Her work has entered major collections, including Arts Council England, Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst in Germany, and FRAC Pays de la Loire in France. These acquisitions signal recognition of her significance within the contemporary art world.
Critical reception has been enthusiastic. Publications such as Mousse Magazine, Conceptual Fine Arts, Frieze, and Texte zur Kunst have devoted attention to her exhibitions. Writers often highlight her ability to merge humour and seriousness, crafting works that provoke thought without losing their poetic edge.
Thematic Analysis of Her Work
A deeper look at Williams’s art reveals how consistently she probes the intersections of personal experience and broader social forces.
Memory and Erasure: From her exhibition “Eraser” to her writings, the act of remembering and forgetting recurs. Objects like vehicles or tools become metaphors for what societies choose to erase or preserve.
Performance and the Body: Her live performances often place the body at the centre, exploring vulnerability, resilience, and the absurd.
Material Experimentation: Williams does not restrict herself to traditional art materials. She incorporates everyday objects, text, sound, and moving images, creating multisensory experiences.
Cultural Critique: Whether focusing on branding, class, or authority, her works challenge audiences to reconsider accepted norms.
The Welsh-Berlin Connection
What distinguishes Williams from many of her contemporaries is her dual identity. Rooted in Welsh culture yet thriving in Berlin’s international art scene, she embodies a transnational perspective. This allows her to bridge cultural contexts, weaving together local traditions with global concerns.
In her Welsh exhibitions, she often foregrounds themes of community, storytelling, and collective memory. In Berlin, her works resonate with the city’s history of division and reconstruction. Together, these experiences give her art a rare capacity to speak across boundaries.
Future Directions
Looking ahead, Williams continues to expand her practice. Upcoming appearances at international events such as the Okayama Art Summit in Japan and Biennale Zürich demonstrate her growing global reach. These projects will likely push her work into new thematic territories, while still retaining the wit, experimentation, and critical engagement that define her style.
Why Angharad Williams Matters
In an art world often dominated by spectacle and market pressures, Williams represents an alternative path. Her works are not designed for easy consumption; they challenge, question, and demand active engagement. By addressing themes of authority, technology, memory, and class, she ensures her art remains relevant to urgent social conversations.
Moreover, her ability to integrate writing, performance, and visual art makes her a model of interdisciplinary practice. She resists the compartmentalisation of artistic forms, showing that the most powerful works often emerge from the interplay of different disciplines.
Conclusion
Angharad Williams is a contemporary artist whose influence is steadily growing. From her Welsh roots to her Berlin base, she has built a practice that is both grounded and expansive, personal and political. Her exhibitions across Europe, her writing, and her collaborative projects reveal an artist deeply committed to interrogating the world around her.
With upcoming international projects and an ever-deepening body of work, Williams stands as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary art today. Her art does more than decorate galleries—it questions authority, reconfigures memory, and reimagines the relationship between humans and their environments. For audiences, engaging with her work is not a passive act but a journey into the complex realities of the present.
