William Hohe (b. 2002)
Multimedia artist & photographer | Student studying Photography (BFA) & Advertising (BS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Virgo | Located in Champaign & Chicago, IL
ARTIST STATEMENT
C.V.
Resume
William Hohe (they/them) is a multimedia artist and photographer from Wheaton, Illinois who is currently studying Photography (BFA) and Advertising (BS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
William’s work currently focuses on fascinations with time, queer identities, the absurdity within archive, amalgamation of material within a capitalist society, and self-transformation.
They work mainly within the realm of image making and utilize both digital photography and film photography as their primary medium. Outside of the walls of photography, William also works within sculpture, 3D fabrication, abstract painting, found-object installation and exhibition.
Outside of their fine art practice, William is the current president of the Fashion Network (TFN) at UIUC and co-founder of the Circular Fashion Expo (CFE), UIUC’s largest fashion event, held semesterly in the Siebel Center for Design (SCD).
Previously, their work has been shown nationally in the New York Times, acquired through Visual Supply Co. (VSCO), amongst numerous other galleries/collectors.
full artist statement:
William Hohe (Champaign, IL) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice threads together photography, videography, sculpture, fashion, and installation. Rooted in a fascination with how objects communicate and hold memories, experiences, and relationships, William explores the interactions between archive, collection, and the circulation of these objects to reexamine the everyday. Through this lens, their work explores the queering of space, time, and our perspectives on the mundane.
Their artistic practice is rooted in the intersections of memory, identity, and queerness. Growing up queer and nonbinary in a suburban, Catholic environment profoundly shaped their perspective, compelling them to explore conservatism and the suburban landscape through multidisciplinary art. Artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Nan Goldin, who use personal narratives to explore broader societal themes, often with queer undertones, have significantly influenced their approach. Their work inspires a focus on objects, archives, and the queering of space and time.
At the core of their practice is a photographic approach that interrogates the two-dimensional representation of identity—exploring the self, family, community, and strangers. William challenges the traditional boundaries of the photograph, treating it not just as a static image but as an object and experience. Centering around Sontag’s work in On Photography, “There is the surface [...] now think [...] what is beyond it,”[1] they transform individual images into layered collections and installations, reframing the photograph as both an artifact and a narrative tool within the context of an evolving archive.
William’s work work investigates the tension between the personal and the collective, particularly through the lens of queer semiotics and family archives. A source of queer perspective, Hal Fischer’s work Queer Semiotics inspires this exploration on how objects and images carry memory, embody identity, and mediate relationships. “By claiming these symbols as their own, [queer people] redefine the meaning of objects, gestures, and fashion, creating a counter-narrative to the dominant culture,”[2] Fischer states. By queering traditionally rigid constructs—like time, space, and faith—they create installations and photographs that blur boundaries between fact and fiction, personal and universal. Their process often begins with a photograph or found object, treating it not as a static artifact but as a site for transformation and storytelling.
Through staged self-portraiture and immersive installations, they create elaborate tableaux that capture family members, friends, online strangers, and landscapes. Each detail is carefully considered in William’s transformation of spaces—whether from a road trip, a Grindr chatroom, or a fabricated set—into fertile domains for storytelling. These images and spaces point to a tension between literal and metaphorical representations.
William's current research is an investigation into the concept of family and memory. Archive fever and its popularization by Jacques Derride who investigated the photographic ephemera and the construction (and collapse) that emerges to the obsession of this larger collection helps to navigate, document and reinterpret their suburban family archive, curated largely by matriarchs, to explore the interplay of image, object, and history.[3] Furthermore, through complex dynamics of objectification, exploitation, and identity, they examine queer semiotics in digital spaces, particularly through gay hookup apps. In doing so, William tests the possibilities of collaboration and connection within these liminal online spaces.
Much of their work stems from their upbringing in a suburban, Catholic environment, where the tensions between queerness, faith, and small-town life shaped their perspective as a young, genderqueer creative. By coding traditionally religious or secular objects through a queer lens, William reclaims and unravels these symbols, using them to personify memories and explore the contradictions between conservative spaces and personal expression. Rather than condemning, their work seeks to deliver the nuance and conflicts that emerge from these intersections, revealing how such environments shape identity and creativity.
Through autobiographical fiction and performative imagery, William’s practice transforms passive experiences into a larger commentary on self-presentation, belonging, and the act of being "othered." Their photographs, sculptures, videos, and multimedia installations function as interconnected bodies of work: narratives that blend individual stories, collective memories, and imagined realities.
In the future, they aim to expand their exploration of queer semiotics by delving deeper into digital spaces and their potential for collaborative storytelling. They are particularly interested in the dynamics of hookup apps as liminal spaces for connection and identity construction in projects such as Of masked & omitted devices. In this project, they subvert these digital spaces to reveal the humanity behind the profile and people that populate these digital spaces. Additionally, they hope to experiment further with installation art, incorporating sound, video, and more experimental conversations between media in the future. Most of all, continuing to merge personal narratives with broader cultural critiques, they aspire to foster spaces such as large-scale fashion, art, and community-centered spaces where viewers can engage with the complexities of presentation, performance, and collaboration inside urban spaces.
At its core, their practice is about creating spaces—physical, conceptual, and emotional—where identity can be questioned, memory can be reimagined, and the mundane becomes complex. As they continue to develop as an artist, they remain committed to challenging conventions, fostering collaborative exchanges, and making work that invites both introspection and connection, of the personal and societal kinds. Whether reinterpreting family archives, embodying fabricated personas, or exploring the cultural tensions of queerness in America, William’s work toes the line between fact and fiction, family and stranger, and individual versus an archive. Each detail holds a piece of the familiar, yet every image reveals something foreign—creating a space for viewers to reflect on their own identities, memories, and stories through the things we carry.
[1] Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
[2] Fischer, Hal. Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men. NFS Press, 1977.
[3] Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric Prenowitz, University of Chicago Press, 1996.