Nico Williams

Nico Williams’ intricate practice with hand-woven glass beads honors beadworks’ relational lineages while expanding traditions of representational adornment. He translates accessible utilitarian forms and objects that have both overt and overlooked relationships to gratitude, land, language, and exchange and commerce. The uncanny mimicry of his sculptures engages the original and the copy with an archival intention that also holds witty and wry reflections on how trade, capitalism, and consumer histories and cultures intersect with Native life.

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ (b.1989) is a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation (Anishinaabe) and currently lives in Mooniyang/Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). His work is exhibited internationally including recent solo exhibitions Bingo, PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montréal, Canada (2025); P/RESERVE, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, USA (with Audie Murray) (2025); and Aaniin, I See Your Light, Brooklyn Museum, NY, USA (2024). Recent group exhibitions include Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969, SITE Sante Fe, NM, USA (2026), MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK, CA (2025), and Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA (2023); Beads and Belonging, Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University, CA, USA (2025); and Radical Stitch, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, IN, USA (2025).

Williams holds a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture, Concordia University (2021). His numerous awards include winner of Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award (2024), the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art (2021), as well as grants awarded by Canada Council, Conseil des arts de Montréal, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec Impetus Grant, The Ontario Arts Council, and the Fluevog Artist Grant.

Williams’ work is in numerous public and private collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, Forge Project, Gochman Collection, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Archives Nationales du Québec, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, and the Royal Bank of Canada Art Collection.  

nicowilliams.com