In A Million Roses, Bri Williams transforms the familiar, domestic object of a cutting board into a powerful expression of strength and defiance. Traditionally confined to the kitchen, the cutting board is the one surface where the domestic worker—often marginalized by class, race, or gender—is permitted to wield a knife. It is an object of routine, repetition, and restraint.
Williams carves into this surface the image of a powerful animal—one that resembles a bull, caught in a stance of unstoppable force, ready to charge. In doing so, the artist subverts the board’s passive function, turning it from a site of submission into a declaration of power. From the repetition of the domestic, from lives constrained by societal expectations, emerges the seed of resistance—an untamed energy that, like the bull, refuses to be contained.