Noel Anderson
My work explores the historical relationships between Jacquard tapestry weaving and contentious photo-based representations (televisual and cinematic) of black masculinity. Invented in the late 18th century, Jacquard tapestries introduced a method of binary coding, which was later used to develop computational systems and images produced on analog and digital screens. My use of Jacquard tapestries draws material and conceptual connections between media’s distorted representations of black men and weaving. Starting with an image, I work with weavers to fabricate the source-picture into a woven tapestry. As I warp the images before weaving, textiles offer an opportunity to develop the relationship between cloth, screen culture, and the distortion of black bodies in the American imagination. It is important to note that the image is woven, and not printed- on-fabric. The woven image causes the representation to be more an object and ground, against which other applications can be mounted. Through physical acts of sanding, brushing, picking, dyeing, and collaging, I address conceptual concerns of the image’s stability and meaning. While my work materializes and collapses photography’s genealogical link with weaving and other modes of representation – historically paintings were translated into tapestries, prints, and photographs – obscuring the image by distressing threads and staining with dyes challenges photographic accuracy. Fraying an image’s validity renders meaning, thought absolute and static, mobile. This disintegration of truth, and integration of disciplines, expresses my commitment to developing historical and conceptual connections between disciplines and computational coding as they inform the power of representation of black masculinity in media, while extending photography’s possibilities. Furthermore, textile, as a metaphor, is deployed to address the entanglement of social, cultural, and political discourses circumscribing black masculine forms. Through Jacquard tapestry weaving, I seek to spotlight the complexities of attempting to define black male subjects through surface and corporeality.
Blak Origin Moment (installation shot); dimensions variable; 2017-2020
Die Leitung; Distressed, stretched Jacquard tapestry; 13 x 9ft; 2016-2020
Hands-Up; 4 stetched Jacquard tapestries; 44 x 38in; 2017-2019
Hunter Museum of American Art collection
La Radio; Distressed, stretched Jacquard tapestry; 13 x 9ft; 2016-2018
Untitled (LALA); Distressed, stretched Jacquard tapestry; 25 x 25ft; 2018- 2019
Noel Anderson
All images courtesy of the artist and gallery.