The Selection Committee Radio Show with Noel W. Anderson, 4/2/23

Artist Noel W. Anderson brought one of my favorite playlists to date on this Palm Sunday show, and no wonder—music (and movement) plays a profound role in both his studio practice and his everyday way of being.

When I first met him, Noel’s work was primarily performance-based, but his more recent work involves appropriating images from both archival and commercial sources and translating them into woven tapestries. When the tapestries get to the studio, he then abrades, snags, stains, and otherwise distresses them in a process reenacting the vicissitudes of time and abuse.

Noel talks about recent, past, and upcoming shows which are organized into three parts and all consider the contemporary condition of Blackness as he sees it:
Black excellence, Black exhaustion, and Black erasure. This structure provides a framework for Noel to connect form and story (and for James Brown to make some surprise appearances).