Noel W Anderson
Dogon Flesh, 2021
Linen pulp silkscreen on cotton and linen base sheet with embedded basketball material
20 x 16 inches

Dieu Donné is proud to present a new edition by Noel W Anderson. Anderson worked with Master Collaborator Amy Jacobs to create Dogon Flesh, an edition of 15 works using papermaking techniques of pulp printing and embedding. This work builds on the impressive body of work Anderson developed in his 2018 Workspace Residency at Dieu Donné. Of this new edition, Anderson writes:

“For Dogon Flesh, we trapped the laser-cut version of the word between two sheets of orange paper, upon which we pressed pulp through a silkscreen of the image of my favorite Dogon sculpture from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Arms raised in the air (one severed at the elbow), I imagine this gesture historically as a posture of praise, and contemporarily as a sign of surrender and resistance. As the word is beneath the final layer, it appears to hover between foreground, middle ground, and (back)ground. Embedding language within the image seeks to confuse the origin of meaning. Which came first, the word or the image? In this scenario, word and image merge. Upon closer inspection, the image's surface dries around the embedded term, exploiting the epidermis-like quality of athletic balls. The end result exposes athletic flesh (black bodies) as both central to challenging the legitimacy of representation as well as transforming the dermis from ocularly read (read with eyes) to tangibly felt. Those bumps, divots, dents, and colors turn skin into braille. To write the black body it must be felt. With language paradoxically trapped within the image, and further confined within art's system (Hammer was right, "You can’t touch this") viewers are only able to practice conventional, distanced reading. The deferral of access and meaning are central to my research. Paper is a great way to synthesize, confuse, and extend meaning's possibilities.”

About the Artist

Noel W Anderson (b. 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 utilizes print-media and arts-based research to explore philosophical inquiry methodologies. He primarily focuses on the mediation of socially constructed images on identity formation as it relates to black masculinity and celebrity. In 2018, Noel was awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant and the prestigious Jerome Prize. His solo exhibition Blak Origin Moment debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in February 2017 and travelled to the Hunter Museum of American Art in October 2019. His first monograph, Blak Origin Moment, was also recently published.

For more information, please visit his website:
https://www.nwastudios.com/