What happens when you upend an image? Applying this very simple question to an image of NBA Hall of Famer or NBA great players dribbling a ball, revealed their shadows as a reflection. Noel W. Anderson is thinking about this shadow the way author Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man and theorist Franz Fanon discuss the non-being of black people’s being like a shadow. This work is about realizing a certain kind of spiritual, supernatural, magical power of black male subjects and bodies through the process of inversion.

From tattered old rugs to mechanically-produced tapestries, Anderson embeds a spectrum of fibers with found images and physical usage just long enough to fray their edges and challenge their legibility. Working with a team of weavers, Anderson appropriates, manipulates, and weaves images into a series of tapestries. Upon completion, he labors over each thread, distressing, dyeing, and collaging the weavings. Anderson suspends a number of mediums evident in his works including, photography, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. The masking of these mediums alludes to historical subjugation of black bodies, as well as Anderson’s treatment of subjects, found images, and meaning. Distressing and dyes are techniques employed to further complicate the viewing experience. In some instances, images blur as the tapestry fibers optically blend from distressing. In other cases, images dissolve and emerge from fields of ambient color. The exhibited works attempt to locate an elusive black essence by way of images which, for Anderson, “evoke moments where racial recognition is heightened,” but resolution is deferred. Anderson highlights a contingent state of identity, the plurality of “blackness,” and encounters that are as poignant as they are partial.”

Noel W. Anderson (b. 1981, Louisville, Kentucky) is based in Harlem and works primarily with printmaking and French weaving. He received an MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking, and an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. He is also Area Head of Printmaking in New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. Noel has been awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant (Interdisciplinary, 2018), the prestigious Jerome Camargo Prize, and the paper making residency at Dieu Donné. His solo monographic exhibition Black Origin Moment debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in February 2017 and traveled to the Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga) in October 2019. In 2021, Noel W. Anderson presented Heavy is the Crown at the Telfair Museum (Savannah, GA) and It’s Magic at Fondazione Mudima (Milan, Italy). Noel W. Anderson participated to the 12th Berlin Biennale in September 2022. He was recently part of institutional museum shows at Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA, and at Shirley Fiterman Art Center at BMCC, NY. In 2023 he presented, Black Exhaustion, at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria. In April 2024, he was part of Des exploits, des chefs-d’oeuvre, a project initiated by the Frac Sud – Cité de l’art contemporain, in partnership with the MuCEM – Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée. He is currently participating at the 15th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.