Citations from the Arena

UTA Artist Space is pleased to present Citations from the Arena, a virtual exhibition featuring works by Noel W. Anderson, fine artist and Area Head of Printmaking in NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions.

Anderson’s current body of work weaves images depicting black and white subjects participating in the “staging” of athletic events. As this work assumes the spectacle in the arena is a microcosmic expression of socially developed racial performance, the resultant manipulated woven image subtly observes the movements of the “players” in the field; tracks how they unconsciously mirror previous racialized roles. Haunted by the reality of a continuum, works such as Fan-Addict: Munch’s Mob #1 and #2, in which white basketball fans are captured celebratorily screaming, conjure a subtext— an historical origin of mob movements and anti-Black violence.

Against this subtext, the artist position the series Durant in Transition in which images of famed basketball player Kevin Durant are edited and woven to look as though he is in motion— evading capture.

In addition, the works have been physically manipulated post-weaving to fur the cotton fibers and blur the image. While the vibratory nature of these woven images allude to performance, the furry, blurry quality of the physicalized woven surface converge with the design of motion to highlight the beautiful and creative possibility of fugitivity. Image and subject mirror each other and remain difficult to capture.

The historical reality of Black fugitivity— a cultural performance of evasion— is related to the cotton used in the image’s woven fabrication. Noel W. Anderson’s deployment of tapestry weaving observes two significant historical relations: the connection between empire and cloth, and cotton as related to Black labor. Firstly, for centuries large-scale tapestry weavings functioned as representations of power for members of royal and wealthy classes. Secondly, the loom the artist uses weaves images in cotton. Framed “televisually,” these two facts are meant to materially and conceptually critique systemic legacies of images and their resultant performances and identity formations.