WILLIAM VILLALONGO

  • Tondo with a blast of shards artifacts and water on velvet
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Velvet painting depicting a storm of clay shards, disembodied body in the center, coral, grass, and mythological motifs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Vertical rectangular painting with drinking gourds, eyes, hands, and feet
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Rectangular black painting with drinking gourds, hands, pottery, and seashells
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A round, black canvas with swirling collaged elements including ancient statuary, starfish, leaves, and geologic forms
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Blue velvet tondo with hands in the middle holding a dung beetle, surrounded by archeological objects
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Red tondo with hands, eyes, butterflies, and seashells
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Black circular painting with red leaves, Janiforms, seashells, and crystals
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Dark green painting with mask, fish, drinking gourds, and ceramic shards
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Crab with African historical objects surrounding it
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Black velvet flocked sculptures hanging from gold chains in a large room
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A painting on black background references European and Dutch still life painting from the colonial era, a genre known as “memento mori” that pointed metaphorically to human mortality in a rich display of colonial plunder. Usually thought of as benign grouping of objects, the artist sees in these paintings stories of colonialism, ill-gotten gains and black labor. Often, the work incorporated images of black “servant boys,” just visible outside the frame deployed to serve as symbol of the European subject’s wealth. Such paintings express the paradoxical visibility and invisibility of black people within the European colonial world. In "Still Life with Quilt and Drinking Gourds," the artist explores how seemingly innocent objects can be used to tell a freighted story. The rich velvet ground enfolds histories and narratives within a space of blackness, unlinked from time and place. From a dimly lit background emerges a white-gloved hand draped with a quilt in lieu of the traditional liteau. Below, a silver platter is littered with drinking gourds, a star map, nautical telescope, rotting bananas and a photograph of Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura of the “Star Trek” television series. The tableau features objects used to navigate by the stars and to way-find, conjuring images of black migration and the Underground Railroad. The quilted waiter’s napkin suggests the patterned quilts used to signal safe houses along the Underground Railroad. It has been posited that specific messages were hidden in the geometry of these quilts. The pattern shown here was known as the “Lincoln platform,” developed in honor of President Lincoln’s inauguration. A portrait of Lieutenant Uhura from “Star Trek,” is featured in this painting alongside the gourds which symbolized the Big Dipper, a navigational device on the Underground Railroad. Nichelle Nichols' character first appeared on the series in 1966, and was ground breaking in many ways, most notably for the first on-screen interracial kiss. For the artist, she represents the furthest reaches of the Black imagination. In the face of a world which to this day tries to extinguish Black lives, Uhura showed us a future with a Black woman in charge
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A painting incorporating images of gloved hands presenting a cascade of lobster, paper boat, and aquarium containing an African sculpture.
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Acrylic and velvet flock painting of a tray with meat, beer, a gun, flowers and other items with a dead bird and sneakers suspended above
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A constellation of flocked gourds, shells, and cast sculptures of the artist and his wife's hands, connected by gold chains.
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A constellation of crystals, butterflies, geodes, African sculpture, and human motifs intercut with leafy cut-outs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Collage on black velvet with drinking gourds, African sculptures, crystals, and human motifs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Collage on black velvet with drinking gourds, African sculptures, crystals, and human motifs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Collage on black velvet with butterflies, African sculptures, crystals, and human motifs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Collage on black velvet with butterflies, African sculptures, crystals, and human motifs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Collage on black velvet with drinking gourds, African sculptures, crystals, and human motifs
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Cut black paper showing head cut as filigree from paper pierced by two eyes, sandwiched between two painted brown hands
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Cut black paper showing prone figure, extended arms painted brown, body cut as filigree from paper
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Painting showing black body in filigree curled in a brown wooden box
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Painting of figure in filigree, sitting behind red desk with computer, Empire State Building seen through window
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Painting of nude dark skinned man holding letter, man on raft rowing in background
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Painting of invisible figure holding silver trey bearing a photo of Dillon Roof and orange peel, two eyes peer out from darkness
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Navy background painting with feathers and arms floating
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Painting on a teal background depicts a woman jumping from a door and a hand
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A shield-shaped painting featuring women painters studying a black model wearing a Josephine-Baker inspired banana-skirt and wearing a modernist painting as a mask
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • A fan shaped canvas of a group of women in Modernist masks by a river
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Oval shaped canvas with Nude woman in water wearing a modernist mask looking at viewer over her shoulder
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO
  • Abstract composition with many faces forming a landscape and fire
    WILLIAM VILLALONGO