M HKA Ensembles

° 1956

Born in Washington D.C. (US).

Cady Noland was born in 1956 in Washington, DC, and is based in New York. Noland was an important representative of the American Gothic Revival in the late 1980s and developed into an influential artist in the years that followed. Taking part in Documenta IX confirmed her potential, but she has since been absent from the international art circuit for a decade, barely exhibiting any new work since the turn of the century. Noland deals in her art with the failure of the American Dream. Her installations, murals and sculptures seek to expose the hidden drives beneath US society. Many of them refer to episodes from recent American history that have received intensive media attention. She explores the stories of modern-day heroes and anti-heroes, emphasizing the ambiguity of good and evil. Noland is interested in figures who are portrayed in the media as psychopathic or pathological. Yet she does not regard their morbid, violent behaviour as ‘abnormal’, but as innate to contemporary America. Aggression, she feels, is found in expressions of dissatisfaction by the individual, which do not constitute a threat to established societal systems. Whereas violence once symbolized justice – something strongly associated with American independence – it is now viewed as ‘abnormal’: desperate acts by lone individuals for whom the American Dream failed to materialize.