Sue Williams and the feminist sweep of WHAT NOW at Belvedere 21

From the AD HOC NEWS Art Desk » Museum & Collection Desk - The editors cover exhibitions, auctions, collections, prizes and artistic positions. Published: August 19, 2026 · Last checked: August 19, 2026, 3:59 PM

Sue Williams anchors the major exhibition SUE WILLIAMS: WHAT NOW at Belvedere 21 in Vienna. As the museum’s press material explains, the chronologically arranged show gathers more than 100 works from the late 1980s to the present in the institution’s collection spaces. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW

The survey at Belvedere 21

Belvedere 21 describes WHAT NOW as the most comprehensive exhibition to date on the American artist, born in 1954 in Chicago Heights, Illinois, with paintings, drawings, collages and selected sculptures. Belvedere exhibition page The installation photographs show dense hanging of large canvases alongside intimately scaled works.

The museum’s curatorial text emphasizes how Williams’s practice consistently questions painting as a medium and the boundary between figuration and abstraction, linking personal trauma with structural violence and wider political events. It frames the exhibition as a four-decade arc across feminist, body-political and geopolitical themes. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW

Museum & collection context on Wednesday

Belvedere notes that Williams taught as visiting professor in representative painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna between 1997 and 1999, connecting the exhibition back to a local pedagogical history and influence on younger artists such as Katrin Plav?ak and Sevda Chkoutova. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW That institutional tie underlines the museum’s long-term engagement with her work.

The show also folds in loans from private collections and long-term loans already in Vienna, such as Lots of Colours (1997), which Belvedere lists as on permanent loan from Ernst Ploil, and canvases from international galleries including 303 Gallery in New York and Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zurich and Vienna. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW This mix positions Williams within both local and global collection networks.

The arc from violence to abstraction

Belvedere’s English press release traces early works such as TRY TO BE MORE ACCOMMODATING (1991) and A FUNNY THING HAPPENED (1992), which depict everyday sexualized violence against women with stark directness and terse texts, as the starting point of the survey. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW These pieces made Williams widely known in the early 1990s.

Works like The Art World Can Suck My Proverbial Dick (1992) explicitly address patriarchal structures in the art system itself, embedding institutional critique within cartoon-like figuration. The museum reads these canvases as exposing mechanisms of silencing and trivializing survivors, even as they deploy humor and caricature. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW

Collection presence and key works

From the mid 1990s, Williams shifts toward more gestural abstraction, with works such as Lots of Colours (1997) and Mom’s Foot Blue and Orange (1997) adopting an all-over compositional strategy associated with Abstract Expressionism but populated by distorted body parts and fetish motifs. Belvedere points out how these images remain visually seductive yet refuse harmlessness. Belvedere press release on WHAT NOW

The exhibition list highlights works now familiar within European collections, including Shoe Bits at Sunset (1998) from the evn collection near Vienna, and Your Bland Essence (1992) from a private collection. These holdings support the picture of Williams as an artist whose paintings circulate between US and European institutional frameworks.

How Sue Williams works

Across the survey, Williams uses painting to splice text snippets, cartoon-like figuration, and exploding abstract forms that register trauma, geopolitical events and everyday misogyny. Her canvases move from explicit narratives toward layered compositions, where architectural motifs, floating limbs and neon lines insist on the body’s presence within power structures.

Where the artist stands now

Against this backdrop, Sue Williams occupies a museum-level position as a feminist painter whose long-term presence in public and private collections underpins exhibitions such as WHAT NOW, even when no new date falls within the current 30-day window.

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.