Sue Williams and the work core behind WHAT NOW
Published on 08/29/2026 at 14:56 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWS
Sue Williams has spent four decades turning intimate, often brutal experiences into insistent, noisy painting. Her retrospective Sue Williams: WHAT NOW at Belvedere 21 in Vienna frames that long arc of feminist, politically charged work across more than 100 pieces.
The long arc of WHAT NOW
At Belvedere 21, Sue Williams: WHAT NOW is structured chronologically, moving from late 1980s canvases dense with cartoonish sexual violence to more recent, luminous abstractions that still carry bodies and trauma in their layers. The museum describes the show as the most comprehensive presentation of her work to date, with paintings, drawings, collages and select sculptures spanning all phases of her practice.
Across the galleries, Williams threads humor into scenes of injury and desire, forcing viewers to navigate between bright, almost playful palettes and explicit depictions of gendered aggression. Belvedere’s in-depth focus on her imagery underlines how the artist keeps returning to the same core questions of autonomy, shame and visibility, even as her style slides between figuration and abstraction.
From early figuration to charged abstraction
Early works in the Vienna show stage fragmented female bodies, crude speech bubbles and violent gestures, borrowing from comics and low-resolution advertising to expose how misogyny is packaged as everyday entertainment. Later paintings thin out the explicit narrative but retain dismembered limbs, floating orifices and weapon-like objects that hover in unstable, pastel fields.
Text, doodle-like lines and stains appear as if scribbled over and erased, suggesting arguments, diary entries or medical diagrams that never fully settle. Belvedere points to this oscillation between beauty and disturbance as central to Williams’s contribution, with the exhibition title WHAT NOW signaling her insistence on keeping traumatic content open rather than neatly resolved.
Further reporting on Sue Williams
Readers can find more news and background pieces on Sue Williams’s exhibitions and market data in the AD HOC NEWS archive.
The work core in series
One of the key strands in Williams’s practice is the evolution from explicitly narrative canvases in the early 1990s to dense, almost all-over compositions where bodies and weapons dissolve into pattern. In later paintings, clusters of biomorphic shapes, stains and thin contour lines recall organs, wounds and sex toys without resolving into clear scenes, keeping interpretation unsettled.
Her drawing series intensify this approach by stripping away color and focusing on jagged mark-making and diagrammatic text. Collage works introduce real objects and printed fragments into the frame, emphasizing how violence against women appears not only in personal memories but in wider media and political discourse.
Materials, process and feminist position
Williams’s paintings often combine oil and acrylic on canvas, deployed in layered washes, sharp outlines, splatters and handwritten notes that suggest speed and corrections. She uses candy-colored palettes, floral motifs and decorative swirls to camouflage scenes of assault, forcing viewers to confront how cultural surfaces can hide structural brutality.
Curators underline her place within a feminist lineage that includes artists who confront sexual violence and reproductive politics with graphic imagery, yet Williams’s work stands out for its mix of slapstick humor, embarrassment and explicit bodily detail. The Belvedere catalog, with 160 images over 288 pages, traces these shifts in materials and themes in detail and positions her oeuvre as both personal and political.
Sue Williams at a glance
- Artist: Sue Williams
- Medium / Genre: Painting and works on paper (feminist, politically charged)
- Born: 1954, Chicago Heights, United States
- Place(s) of practice: Studio-based practice in the United States, with strong institutional links in Vienna through Belvedere 21
- Active since: Late 1980s, with early solo exhibitions documented in museum and gallery records
- Key work groups: Early figurative canvases with cartoon violence, mid-career abstracted body fields, later biomorphic compositions, drawing and collage series aligned with WHAT NOW
- Current/last exhibition: Sue Williams: WHAT NOW, Belvedere 21, Vienna, major retrospective spanning late 1980s to the present
- Major collections: Works in public collections including Albertina Modern (Vienna) and institutions highlighted in her CV such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition contexts
- Awards: Career highlighted through major institutional shows rather than headline prizes in the Turner or Hugo Boss tiers
- Next date: No exhibition, auction, fair or award date publicly confirmed within the immediate 30-day window
Frequently asked questions about Sue Williams
Where can Sue Williams’s retrospective WHAT NOW be explored in depth?
Belvedere 21 in Vienna presents Sue Williams: WHAT NOW as a comprehensive chronological exhibition with over one hundred works, accompanied by a catalog that documents her development since the late 1980s.
What themes run through Sue Williams’s major work groups?
Her canvases and drawings repeatedly address sexualized violence, gendered power and bodily autonomy, using bright color, cartoon-like forms and text fragments to expose how everyday images encode trauma and misogyny.
How does Sue Williams’s style shift over time in WHAT NOW?
The Belvedere show charts a trajectory from early narrative scenes packed with explicit figures and speech bubbles to later paintings where dismembered limbs and objects dissolve into abstract, biomorphic fields while retaining an undercurrent of disturbance.
This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.
