Apr 15

Apr 15 Close Attention: The Intricate Complexities of Nico Williams’s Beaded Artworks

Essays, Spring / Summer 2025

**Nico Williams,** *Bingo* (detail), 2025. 15/0 Japanese Glass Cylinder Beads, original, thermally-fused/braided polyethylene thread, 16 cm x 16 cm. Photo: Paul Litherland. COURTESY OF NICO WILLIAMS STUDIO.

Winner of the prestigious 2024 Sobey Award, contemporary artist Nico Williams finds inspiration in throwaways: lottery tickets, construction fencing, grocery store flyers, Zig-Zag rolling papers and cardboard boxes. Williams diverts materials slated for the landfill into his studio in Hochelaga in the east end of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. There, Williams and his team of collaborators study the intimate details of the disposable, their colours, textures, font sizes — even the tilt of the lines in their bar codes — to create hyperreal and dazzling 3D likenesses as beadwork sculptures.

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**Nico Williams**, *Amazon Bag*, 2022. Glass beads, 111.8 x 30.5 x 16.8 cm. COURTESY OF BLOUIN DIVISION.

**Nico Williams**, *Amazon Bag* (detail), 2022. Glass beads, 111.8 x 30.5 x 16.8 cm.

**Nico Williams,** *Danger! Tread Lightly*, 2023. Japanese silver-lined glass bugle beads and thread, 10.2 x 551.2 cm. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid. COURTESY OF BLOUIN DIVISION.

Williams, born in Aamjiwnaang/Sarnia, Ont., is a member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation. He holds a BFA in print media (2014) and an MFA in sculpture (2021) from Concordia University. He has been creating and publicly showing beadwork sculptures for more than 10 years, forming part of a larger movement of contemporary Indigenous artists carrying forward and imagining anew the stories beadwork can tell. Amazon Bag, for instance, was included in the tour-de-force exhibition Radical Stitch (Mackenzie Art Gallery, April 30 - September 25, 2022; Art Gallery of Hamilton, February 11 - August 27, 2023; Thunder Bay Art Gallery, October 13, 2023 - March 3, 2024; National Gallery of Canada, May 17 - September 30, 2024; Beaverbrook Art Gallery, November 30, 2024 - March 2, 2025), curated by Sherry Farrell-Racette, Michelle LaVallee and Cathy Mattes, alongside works by more than 40 other Indigenous artists — including Nadia Myre, Ruth Cuthand, Jaime Okuma, and Taqralik Partridge — working with beads across Turtle Island.

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*Nico Williams with his sculpture Monument to the Brave*. Photo: Jimmy Hamelin. COURTESY OF THE SICKKIDS FOUNDATION.

**Nico Williams**, *Reconnecting*, 2025. 11/0 Japanese Glass Cylinders Beads,10/0 Czech Glass Beads, blue stabilizing fluid, Cardboard box, leaflet, sealed plastic DNA testing kit, saliva collection tube, thermally-fused/braided polyethylene thread. 15.5 cm x 11 cm x 2.5 cm. Photo: Paul Litherland. COURTESY OF NICO WILLIAMS STUDIO.

There is a sense of play throughout Williams’s works. One recurring subject he gravitates toward are cards. Bureaucratic ID cards, bingo cards and scratch-offs are material muses for the artist, who, with each iteration, reimagines what personal, social and political effects these cards carry. The repetitive nature of the cards intervenes on the singular authority of a government-issued ID. For some years, Williams has had a practice of creating an annual self-portrait in the form of an “NDN Status Card.” The beaded ID numbers on the card remain the same, but the ID image and the work’s title change.