Until I Get It Together
Abbey Williams
GALLERY II & III
Abbey Williams, Until I Get It Together, Digital video with sound, Approximate RT: 15 min.
September 13–October 12, 2025
Opening reception: Saturday, September 13, 2025 from 6–8pm
A.I.R. Gallery is pleased to present Until I Get It Together, an exhibition of new work by Abbey Williams that reflects on what it means to be a mid-career Black woman artist in this current moment, both within and without the art world. Williams is an inaugural recipient of the A.I.R. Commissioning Program for Mid-Career Women and Non-Binary Artists, a new initiative that aims to bolster A.I.R.’s longstanding commitment to supporting artists in building sustainable and enriching artistic practices.
Until I Get It Together centers on Nina Simone’s rendition of Janis Ian’s ballad Stars as performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland in 1976. In this tour de force performance, Simone, changed by travels and traumas, brought a new tenacity and unsteadiness to her music and this song in particular. Williams is drawn to Stars as an elegy for artists past their prime—a contemplation of decline, endurance, creative inheritance, and legacy.
In the exhibition, Simone’s performance provides the soundtrack for a new two-channel video installation that, split between two rooms, acts as a diptych that resists simultaneous viewing. Upon entering the first room, visitors encounter partially rolled works on paper standing upright, the immediate and expressive inked marks on their surfaces illuminated only by a video projection of cycling blue hues. The ambient calm is disrupted by Simone's sudden interjection—“Sit down!”—directed at an audience member in Montreux. With this command, the song’s first verse, “Stars, they come and go…”, can be heard playing from the adjacent room.
In the video installation’s second channel, Williams’ hands are seen manipulating black ink poured directly onto a flat screen monitor backlit by imageless color fields. Williams improvises gestural movements to Simone’s voice, tracing words from the song’s lyrics in the ink with her fingers, moving the pigment around with her hands, smudging, erasing, and retracing. At times, Williams’ rendition deviates from transcription to interpretation, as when Simone sings the words “But you’ll never know the pain of using a name you never owned” and Williams traces the letters of her own last name, a common Black American slave name.
As in her earlier video works, Williams uses found media, particularly music, to explore themes of Black femmehood, cultural memory, visibility, and recognition. Until I Get It Together, however, departs from her usually tightly edited style, instead embracing the imperfections of unedited improvisation in both the drawings and video. Through this raw, responsive form, Williams’ homage channels the electric intensity of Simone’s performance and the complex self-possession that comes with age. At one point in her performance, Simone appears to lose her place, singing softly, “But I'll continue anyway until I get it together.” Williams follows suit, not in mimicry, but in affirmation.
Initiated in 2024, the A.I.R. Commissioning Program for Mid-Career Women and Non-Binary Artists biannually provides three local artists with financial and curatorial support toward the creation of new work. With an emphasis on women and non-binary artists of color who have been exhibiting for at least ten years but have not yet received widespread recognition, the program seeks to envision a more equitable ecosystem of support for artists underserved by the current arts ecosystem.
The A.I.R. Commissioning Program is made possible by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the generous support of The Rockefeller Brothers Fund Culpeper Arts & Culture Program and two anonymous donors.
Abbey Williams is “a mom, a Libra, an amateur singer, an oversharer,” and an artist who mostly makes videos, living and working in her hometown of New York City. Her work has been exhibited at TATE Britain, London, UK; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY. Williams was a part of the 2005 Greater New York exhibition at MoMA PS1. Williams holds a BFA from the Cooper Union, an MFA from Bard College, and was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, and Artforum.
View the Press Release here.