Cady Noland

1956 | Washington D.C., United States

American sculptor and multimedia artist.

Cady Noland is the daughter of painter Kenneth Noland. After studying at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, she moved to Manhattan. Beginning in 1983, she has developed a body of work from found objects, particularly from American popular culture (handcuffs, revolvers, barbecues, hubcaps, beer cans, shopping carts). Her collages, sculptures and installations are inscribed within the tradition of American Pop Art with a drastically post-minimalist inflection. These works critically question the “American dream” in its psychopathological aspect and attempt a genealogy of the founding myths of the United States, all of which have trouble on the horizon. Her installations have referred to Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, Lee Harvey Osawald (Oozewald, 1989), Patty Hearst – the granddaughter of a notorious press magnate, kidnapped by revolutionaries (Untitled Patty Hearst, 1989) – as well as the serial killer Charles Manson (Mr. Sir, 1993).

In the 1990s C. Noland focused on stigmatising American society’s compromises with the world of surveillance and punishment (torture, public humiliation, imprisonment). Her works involve police barricades surrounding objects of everyday consumption piled up on the ground. During Documenta 9 in Kassel she created a spectacular installation in an underground parking lot, Towards a Metalanguage of Evil (1992), the title coming from an essay she wrote on the occasion relating the mechanisms of fame to the structure of psychopaths. Her work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1995), as well as the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem (2010).

Bernard Marcadé

Translated from French by Katia Porro.

From the Dictionnaire universel des créatrices
© 2013 Des femmes – Antoinette Fouque
© Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Chainsaw Cut Cowboy Head, 1990, silkscreen on aluminum with rope, roll of tape, and cigarette box, 152.4 x 152.4 x 49 cm, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Four in One Sculpture, 1998, painted wood and plastic, wood plank, 182.8 x 17.8 x 3.8 cm, private collection, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Frame Device, 1989, pipes, stanchions, 12 walkers, 335.3 x 335.3 x 137.2 cm, Courtesy Cady Noland and David Zwirner Gallery, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Model With Entropy, 1984, private collection, © Photo: Axel Schneider, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Public Sculpture, 1994, Glenstone Museum, © Photo: Axel Schneider, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, The American Trip, 1988, wire racks, steel pipes, chrome cuffs, American flag, pirate flag, leather straps, cane, and metal parts, 114.3 x 264.2 x 144.8 cm, MoMA, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Tower of Terror, 1993-1994, cast aluminum stockade, bench, link chain, padlocks, key, Glenstone Museum, © Photo: David Griffin, © Cady Noland

Cady Noland — AWARE Women artists / Femmes artistes

Cady Noland, Untitled (Brick Wall), 1994-1995, private collection, Courtesy Cady Noland and Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, © Photo: Fabian Frinzel, © Cady Noland

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