Experimental Gallery, Lower Level

In Kids in American, Kelli Williams combines stop-motion animation, photography, and augmented reality to explore coming of age both as an actual experience and as a media representation. Installed on the wall as still photographs, Williams’ work is brought to life through augmented reality, which enlivens the images with stop-motion animation.

The aesthetics of Kids in America intentionally blurs the boundary between real life and depictions of teen life in popular culture. The movies and tv shows referenced in the exhibition present a heightened vision, both an ideal and a caricature, of life as an American teenager. In drawing on these influences, Williams takes the visual language of a genre that often tokenized or excluded Black characters. She instead presents their experiences as the default, exploring the ways the intersection of race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion shape identity. Throughout Williams’ work, the physicality of stop-motion animation, created through a meticulous, hands-on process, acts as a material metaphor for the tangible effort involved in crafting personal identity.

Kelli Williams
Born 1989, Landover, MD
Based in Elkridge, MD

Kelli Williams is an animator and visual artist who uses stop-motion animation, photography, augmented reality, installation, and humor to create work that explores the impact of social and mass media on the construction and perception of identity. Williams’ work has been exhibited widely,  including most recently at the Peale Museum, the Eubie Blake Center for the Arts, and Gallery CA, all in Baltimore, MD. Her work has screened at film festivals in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Columbus, and Edinburgh, Scotland, among many other locations. Williams contributed to Netflix’s Peabody award-winning short film Cops and Robbers and her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Columbus Live, Hyperallergic, Artnet, and Baltimore Magazine. Williams holds a BA in Fine Art from Morgan State University and an MFA from Columbus College of Art & Design. She is a professor at Maryland Institute College of Art.

Kelli Williams: Kids in America takes place as part of MoCA Arlington’s SOLOS 2025, part of the Museum’s long-running SOLOS exhibition program. Launched in 1988, SOLOS features solo exhibitions by artists based in the Mid-Atlantic region who are working at the forefront of contemporary art.