ARWIL is a 26-year-old multimedia artist based in Madison, originally from Benton, Arkansas. His work centers on the use (and misuse) of art materials to highlight the low-quality garbage that defines modern consumer culture. ARWIL advocates for consumption habits that support skilled craftspeople and rejects the mass-production of digestible corporate home decor.

From a distance, much of ARWIL’s work could be mistaken for stains, spills, or actual garbage. In 2023, a TikTok in which he showed a series of pressure-washed paintings on cotton paper went viral for all the wrong reasons. Over five-thousand comments, primarily negative, hated the concept that time could be spent attempting to replicate the texture and color of trash. This reaction encouraged him to unpack why viewers seemed insulted by the concept and to push those processes further.

“People buy actual garbage every day, products that are designed to go straight to the landfill, but when I attempt to recreate the patina of their wasteful purchases, it seems to trigger something within them. I’ve never gotten such an intense online response, positive or negative, which tells me I’ve found something I’ve got to dig deeper into,” he said. “I’m not immune to the sins of consumer culture, but I know there’s a better way, and I desperately want people to think about that.”

ARWIL combines traditional art materials such as oil, acrylic, and graphite with nontraditional application techniques.

Across both his 2D and 3D work, ARWIL’s pieces reject the ideals of modern consumer habits in favor of compositions and textures that are impossible to recreate or mass produce. Instead of selling prints, which he feels sacrifices essential textures and shadows, he makes his sketches and small works available at accessible price-points.

After moving from Arkansas four years ago, ARWIL has settled in Madison with his husband, Logan, and their two cats. Since then, his work has been featured in coffee shops and retail spaces around the city. This spring, ARWIL completed a 3-month artist residency in Beaumont-des-Pertuis, France. Working in such a remote and ancient village provided a unique opportunity to focus exclusively on his art and to draw inspiration from the textures around him. Works from this residency were exhibited at The Bounty in Madison, where he will be undertaking his next residency in 2025.

2024 Great Madison+ LGBTQ+ Artist Survey

Adam Raiford Wilson (ARWIL), Multimedia
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