Noel W Anderson explores the relationship between the formation of Black identity as socially constructed through images from American media.

His works are often made of cotton, either in the form of woven tapestries, handmade paper objects, or experimental prints.

Anderson heavily manipulates appropriated photographs by digitally and physically altering them in the resulting artworks.

The works’ slide from clarity into abstraction conceptually mirrors what happens with the subjects from the source images themselves, as stereotypes and archetypes overtake the individuality of the person being photographed.

Anderson’s photographic source materials—from political activists like Martin Luther King, Jr., to a group of prisoners lined up against a prison fence, to sports heroes like basketball player Spud Webb—collectively prompt the viewer to consider their own relationship to the distorted depiction of Black masculinity in American culture.

Noel W Anderson was born in Louisville, KY and lives and works in New York. He has an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture and MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking, and is currently Area Head of Printmaking in New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions.

Anderson has been awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant (Interdisciplinary, 2018), 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 from November 2022 to January 2023. He also exhibited in the 12th Berlin Biennale. His work is included in the permanent collections of the International Center of Photography, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Hunter Museum of American Art. Anderson’s upcoming solo show with JDJ opens this September concurrent with his solo show at the BMCC Shirley Fiterman Art Center.