Denise "Dee" Yookong Williams
Artist Statement
As a primarily self-taught artist, art has always felt like a universal language to me, guiding me in both my personal and professional life. Growing up, art helped me navigate my own traumatic healing processes, a practice I continue to today. As a trauma-focused social worker, my clinical practice has focused on how art can be used to explore complex emotions and health from trauma and complicated grief. This work led me to develop various arts-based workshops to explore stigmatized issues such as suicidality and suicide loss, especially among queer and young people of color, using the arts both as a research method and avenue for communicating and healing. I see art as a way to elevate various social justice issues, increase empathy, and decrease stigma among individuals and communities—at its core, art can bring us together to have difficult conversations and challenge us to interrogate some of our inherent biases, expanding our worldview and elevating those of us who are not always centered in the dominant narratives of society. We become the counternarrative.
COMMITTEE
Partnership Committee Member
