Cady Noland

Cady Noland (born 1956 in Washington, DC.) is a postmodern conceptual sculptor and an internationally exhibited installation artist, whose work deals with the failed promise of the American Dream and the divide between fame and anonymity, among other themes. Her work has been exhibited in museums and expositions including the Whitney Biennial in 1991 and Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and is the daughter of the Color Field painter Kenneth Noland (1924–2010).

Noland's work often explores what she calls "The American Nightmare," or aspects of American culture she considers toxic, such as social climbing, glamour, celebrity, violence, and death. She describes these social constructs as a "game." Noland's work has dealt with themes of restrictions, both physical and mental, often using metal in her work to evoke senses of joining or separating.

Noland’s central theme in her work retains fear, both personal and cultural. Crashed Car was brought upon by the fact that she was in a car wreck at a very young age. In Plane Crash she emphasizes her fear of flying. The Family and the SLA that kidnapped Hearst is based on her fear of cults. Her newest work has been said to be less aggressive and more friendly to viewers, and more stable and grounded.

Noland’s work also studies the American social landscape and shows America’s social identity to be in fragments. On top of that, she makes sculptures that are prompted by the theme of humiliation that in part lives in the American consciousness. It is all in relation to the institution, containment and mobility, and to the American way of life.

Noland’s arrangement of objects have casualness that call into question the status of the art object and its artistic position. Like other fellow artists, such as Mike Scott and Laurie Parsons, Cady Noland’s paintings resist interpretation. Appropriated by Noland, the role of the press photograph expanded in a post-war country that was understanding and exporting itself through images. She is known for reframing the photo that she appropriates through the materiality of the image itself. It is then transferred by silkscreen from source to surface. According to Noland, to reproduce the image is to insert it into a category of knowledge and understanding. One that is transformed by way of a continuous return.

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