Charles Edward Williams was born in 1984 in Georgetown, South Carolina. Williams completed his bachelor of fine arts degree at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2006 and his master of fine arts degree from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro in 2017. Between 2016 and 2019, Williams attended residencies at the Otis College of Art and Design and SOMA Mexico City. Additionally, he was an artist-in-residence at the Gibbes Museum of Art and the McColl Center of Art and Innovation. Williams has received numerous awards and grants for his work including a Mississippi Humanities Council Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and the Griffith-Reyburn Lowcountry Artist of the Year Award. Solo exhibitions of Williams’ projects have been presented at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, the Polk Museum of Art at Florida Southern College, and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, among others. He has participated in group shows at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and Allentown Art Museum, among other galleries and museums across the United States and abroad. Williams is represented in numerous public collections including the Mississippi Museum of Art, 21c Museum Hotels, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and in the private holdings of Michael and Susan Hershfield and the Petrucci Family Collection of African American Art, among others.
