SOLOS Artist Talks: Kei Ito and Kelli Williams

Join SOLOS artists Kei Ito and Kelli Williams to learn more about their SOLOS 2025 exhibitions, Kei Ito: Embodied Spectrum and Kelli Williams: Kids in America.  Admission is free. Talks will take place at MoCA Arlington in the Tiffany Gallery, on the main level of the museum.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS

In Embodied Spectrum, Kei Ito “visualizes invisible forces” by bringing together language and image in an immersive installation. Ito combines multiple modalities to evoke experiences, relationships, and physical phenomena that are difficult to represent in visual form. Centered on the first photographic image ever taken of the sun, the installation evokes the unique connection between the sun and human-generated nuclear weapons.

In Kids in America, Kelli Williams combines stop-motion animation, photography, and augmented reality to explore coming of age both as an actual experience and as a media representation. Installed on the wall as still photographs, Williams’ work is brought to life through augmented reality, which enlivens the images with stop-motion animation.

Both exhibitions takes place as part of MoCA Arlington’s SOLOS 2025, part of the Museum’s long-running SOLOS exhibition program. Launched in 1988, SOLOS features solo exhibitions by artists based in the Mid-Atlantic region who are working at the forefront of contemporary art.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kei Ito
Born 1991, Tokyo, Japan
Based in Baltimore, MD

Kei Ito is an interdisciplinary artist whose work utilizes the conceptual framework of photography to visualize the invisible. As a third-generation atomic bomb victim living in the US, Ito employs his generational history as a series of case studies that often applies the language of monuments and memorials. Ito’s work initiates a journey of healing and growth while honoring the memories of those lost to both historical and contemporary tragedies.

Ito’s solo and group exhibitions have been reviewed in the Washington Post Magazine, Hyperallergic, BBC Culture & Art, BmoreArt, ArtMaze Magazine, ESSE Magazine and various newspapers worldwide. His works are included in major institutional collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL), the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL), the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art (Fort Collins, CO), En Foco (NYC, NY), the Eskenazi Museum of Art (Bloomington, IN), and the Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA). Ito received his BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology followed by his MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art.

Kelli Williams
Born 1989, Landover, MD
Based in Elkridge, MD

Kelli Williams is an animator and visual artist who uses stop-motion animation, photography, augmented reality, installation, and humor to create work that explores the impact of social and mass media on the construction and perception of identity. Williams’ work has been exhibited widely,  including most recently at the Peale Museum, the Eubie Blake Center for the Arts, and Gallery CA, all in Baltimore, MD. Her work has screened at film festivals in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Columbus, and Edinburgh, Scotland, among many other locations. Williams contributed to Netflix’s Peabody award-winning short film Cops and Robbers and her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Columbus Live, Hyperallergic, Artnet, and Baltimore Magazine. Williams holds a BA in Fine Art from Morgan State University and an MFA from Columbus College of Art & Design. She is a professor at Maryland Institute College of Art.