Ajané K. Williams is a Generation Z Afro-futurist painter, performance DJ, and video artist based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Born in 1999 on a military base in Fort Stewart, Georgia, Williams earned her BFA in Painting from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in May 2022.

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Growing up in a military family, Williams was exposed to diverse cultures and experiences across locations such as Alaska, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, as well as overseas in Germany, Japan, and Korea. This constant movement and lack of stability profoundly influence her art, fueling her desire to challenge the unfamiliar and immerse herself in new experiences. Most significantly, this instability fostered a deep sense of solitude from a young age, prompting her to question her existence. She chose to pursue art to continue the legacy of her great-grandfather, Harvey Williams, a left-handed surrealist painter known for creating gospel and jazz album covers in the 1960s, including the Afro-futurist cover for Sun Ra’s Tapestry from an Asteroid.

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Williams was recently selected as the Mint Museum’s ConstellationCLT artist for late 2023 to early 2024, where she showcased her work in the exhibition Sublimations of Spacetime. Her work has been featured in notable group exhibitions, including Coined in the South: 2022 at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and the Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL. Additionally, she has collaborated with fellow UNC Charlotte alumna Jamila Brown, who curated Sublimations of Spacetime and included Williams in other group exhibitions such as String Theory and Diasporic Dream Landing.