Janean Williams was born and raised in southwestern Virginia. She received her MFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2015. She has a bachelor’s in international studies from Hollins University. She lives in Floyd, Virginia.
Janean's videos, performances, photography, and installations are reactions to feeling trapped at home, in rural spaces, and most urgently in her body. Her preoccupations are born out of her grandmother's institutionalization, her mother's odd and inappropriate stories recounted at the family dinner table; dark country and western songs in which young girls jumped off bridges, drunk men felt sorry for themselves, and women bore children, poverty, and shiftless lovers; her grandfather’s crime magazines; and good ol' Appalachian culture.
Janean's videos, performances, photography, and installations are reactions to feeling trapped at home, in rural spaces, and most urgently in her body. Her preoccupations are born out of her grandmother's institutionalization, her mother's odd and inappropriate stories recounted at the family dinner table; dark country and western songs in which young girls jumped off bridges, drunk men felt sorry for themselves, and women bore children, poverty, and shiftless lovers; her grandfather’s crime magazines; and good ol' Appalachian culture.