Making Room for Abolition

Lauren Williams (she/her) is a Detroit-based designer, researcher, and educator. She works with visual and interactive media to understand, critique, and reimagine the ways social and economic systems distribute and exercise power. Through her creative practice and research, she often investigates social fictions like race and the myths that uphold oppressive systems like capitalism. Themes of trust and the transformations enabled by social engagement shape both her approaches and the questions she examines surrounding power and oppression, social relations, and social movements. Lauren has taught design + interdisciplinary studios and intensives at CCS, ArtCenter College of Design, CalArts and elsewhere. Previously, she managed programs and policy aimed at cultivating economic justice at Prosperity Now in DC. Going forward, she’s finding ways to align her capacities with revolutionary movements that build toward different socioeconomic systems entirely and usher in new dimensions of power and freedom altogether.