On View September 6 - December 2, 2023
Featuring works by
Noel W Anderson
Noel W Anderson explores the socially constructed formation of Black male identity through American media in Black Exhaustion, a monographic exhibition of his work on view at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center at Borough of Manhattan Community College from September 6 through December 2.
Anderson’s process starts with found images, appropriated from various archives and media outlets, that he digitally manipulates through mirroring, inverting, cropping or other forms of distortion before it is reproduced as a cotton jacquard tapestry. The resulting textile is then altered by distressing, dying, staining, and physically picking it apart thread by thread. In new works on view, Anderson repeatedly picks and brushes the surface, transforming it into a fur-like texture.
The literal blurring of the images with the foundations on which they are formed parallels the ways in which representations of Black male figures are warped in contemporary culture and media. The formal shift from clarity into abstraction in Anderson’s work conceptually mirrors the process by which stereotypes and archetypes overtake individuality. These works ask us to question our own relationships to issues of race and gender and to the distorted depiction of Black masculinity in American culture.
Black Exhaustion will be on view concurrently with It Belongs in a Museum at JDJ, Tribeca. The two shows are essentially a single exhibition of works by Anderson that takes place in two places. Linked conceptually and thematically, together they expand on Anderson’s exploration of the history and creation of images, especially as they relate to the construction of Black identity, Black labor and performativity, and issues of racialized success.
Noel W Anderson (born in Louisville, KY) received an MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking, and an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. He is also Area Head of Printmaking in NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. Anderson has been awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant, the prestigious Jerome Camargo Prize, and the paper-making residency at Dieu Donné. Anderson’s most recent institutional solo show, Erasure’s Edge, was on view at KMAC Contemporary Art Museum (Louisville, KY). He also exhibited in the 12th Berlin Biennale. His work is included in the permanent collections of the International Center of Photography (New York, NY), The Studio Museum (Harlem, NY), and the Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, TN).
