About

Hadiya Williams is a Washington, DC-based multidisciplinary artist and designer working across ceramics, surface design, print, and digital processes. Her work is shaped by ancestry, Black material culture, historic design, and the objects and visual traditions that are part of everyday life. Drawing from family history, African and African diasporic design traditions, and the material culture she grew up around, Hadiya is interested in what objects can tell us about where we come from and how we live.

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Her practice moves between hand-built ceramics, functional objects, pattern, printmaking, and digital fabrication. Research and experimentation are an important part of how she works, with references ranging from family photographs and archival material to decorative arts and interiors. One process often leads into another, allowing an idea to move between image, pattern, surface, and physical form.

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Born and raised in Washington, DC, Hadiya spent nearly two decades working in visual communications before founding Black Pepper Paperie Co.® in 2017 and eventually moving into a full-time studio practice. Her work has been exhibited at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her ceramic work is held in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Her work and studio practice have also been featured in/on The New York Times, Smithsonian Mag, Domino, Business of Home, and Design Milk.