Synopsis

As is the case with many women, growing up can mean learning how to ignore unwanted attention. I created Hans knowing the very real power of a look. Having first read Hans the Hedgehog, a Grimms’ tale that tells the story of an alienated turned misogynistic hedgehog boy. Hans doesn’t offer any solutions but unpacks the power dynamics associated with looking while fully implicating the viewer in the process. Instead of dialogue, we come to know of the main character through a series of sometimes humorous, sometimes unsettling, stares.

Biography

Stephanie J. Williams is a tinkerer and doodler. Her work primarily navigates hierarchies of taste, unpacking how “official” histories are constructed in order to understand contemporary social coding and the world around us. She received her MFA in Sculpture from RISD, has shown in Fictions, part of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s F-show exhibitions, as well as with Washington Project for the Arts, The Delaware Contemporary Museum, Grizzly Grizzly, |’sindikit |, Greater Reston Art Center and the Walters Museum as a Sondheim Finalist (2019), with residencies at Williams College (2021), the Corporation of Yaddo (2018, 2020), VCCA (2016), ACRE (2015), Elsewhere (2014), Wassaic (2014), School 33 (present) and Vermont Studio Center (2006). Recent projects include a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Fellowship (2020), Seamless: Craft-based Objects and Performance at Rutgers (Camden) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum Women Filmmakers Festival. She currently teaches stop motion for Maryland Institute College of Art.