Sue Williams United States, b. 1954
Pink With Feeth, 2004
oil and acrylic on canvas
122 x 213 cm
48 x 83 7/8 in
48 x 83 7/8 in
Copyright The Artist
In Pink With Feeth, Sue Williams continues her exploration of the body, identity, and power through an explosion of vibrant pink shapes, swirling lines, and suggestive fragments. What at first...
In Pink With Feeth, Sue Williams continues her exploration of the body, identity, and power through an explosion of vibrant pink shapes, swirling lines, and suggestive fragments. What at first glance appears playful and decorative soon reveals itself as an unsettling landscape of distorted limbs, openings, sexual organs, and abstracted body parts. The work teeters between figuration and abstraction, between humor and unease.
Since emerging in the early 1990s, Williams has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in feminist critique, comic book aesthetics, and expressive painterly gestures. Earlier in her career, her paintings featured more overt narratives, graphic depictions of domestic violence and sexual abuse that directly confronted the patriarchal structures of society. In Pink With Feeth, however, these explicit scenes have dissolved into a looser, more fluid composition, what Williams has described as a "calligraphic tissue of unconscious material," made up of line, form, and visceral memory.
The intense pink palette heightens the ambiguity of the work: seductive, absurd, and aggressive all at once. Williams uses this color to challenge conventions around femininity and sexuality, deliberately leading the viewer astray. The composition follows no anatomical logic but instead unfolds as an interior map of psychic and emotional terrain, a surreal pattern of desire, trauma, and reflection.
With Pink With Feeth, Williams masterfully subverts the cheerful surface, creating a visual field that is as seductive as it is disquieting. Her work continues to pose urgent questions about representation, power, and the female body, always with a sharp wit and a fearless hand.
Since emerging in the early 1990s, Williams has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in feminist critique, comic book aesthetics, and expressive painterly gestures. Earlier in her career, her paintings featured more overt narratives, graphic depictions of domestic violence and sexual abuse that directly confronted the patriarchal structures of society. In Pink With Feeth, however, these explicit scenes have dissolved into a looser, more fluid composition, what Williams has described as a "calligraphic tissue of unconscious material," made up of line, form, and visceral memory.
The intense pink palette heightens the ambiguity of the work: seductive, absurd, and aggressive all at once. Williams uses this color to challenge conventions around femininity and sexuality, deliberately leading the viewer astray. The composition follows no anatomical logic but instead unfolds as an interior map of psychic and emotional terrain, a surreal pattern of desire, trauma, and reflection.
With Pink With Feeth, Williams masterfully subverts the cheerful surface, creating a visual field that is as seductive as it is disquieting. Her work continues to pose urgent questions about representation, power, and the female body, always with a sharp wit and a fearless hand.
Provenance
Alain Noirhomme, BelgiumMercier Collection, Belgium
Exhibitions
Belvedere 21, Vienna, Austria, Sue Williams WHAT NOW, Curated by Luisa Ziaja, 20 February 2026 - 7 June 2026Join our mailing list
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