Marisa Williamson

Marisa Williamson is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at the University of Virginia in the College of Arts and Sciences, with a research focus on Blackness. She was part of the first cohort of faculty hired through UVA's Race, Justice and Equity initiative, which builds on the university's commitments to diversity and inclusion.

Williamson's artistic practice centers on history, race, feminism, and technology, working across video, image-making, installation, and performance. Her notable projects include Unsettling Grounds, a residency creating virtual monuments for BIPOC artists, and Sweet Chariot, an exploration of historical narratives through digital means. She creates site-specific works that interrogate how historical landscapes are marked by certain narratives while others remain buried.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Storm King Art Center, SPACES Cleveland, and galleries in Rome and Berlin. Williamson's artistic approach explores how soft and hard technologies facilitate the rendering and surrendering of the body over time, mapping the past onto present geographies to interrogate inheritance, memory, and storytelling.

Williamson has received significant recognition through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Graham Foundation, Rema Hort Mann Foundation, and others. Her work critically engages with historical narratives, particularly around slavery and Black experience, often using innovative technological approaches to challenge conventional historical interpretations.

• Graham Foundation grant
• Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant
• Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library grant
• National Endowment for the Arts grant
• Charlottesville Area Community Foundation grant
• Virginia Humanities grant

As both an artist and academic, Williamson bridges creative practice with scholarly inquiry, focusing on how history is not only understood but felt. Her work at the University of Virginia contributes to broader institutional efforts to address race, justice, and equity through artistic and academic means.