NOEL ODHIAMBO

PRACTICE:

Noel’s practice explores the nature of things and relationships in the physical world through investigations with semiotics, stricture, and space. His works are self-reflective and self-critical: questioning their own assumptions. Drawing from his architectural training and transient background, Noel decontextualizes the banal, thereby calling into question fundamental assumptions about art and the world as we experience it. By complicating the commonplace, Noel touches on the underlying logics and conventions which govern our lives and shape our ideas of identity and meaning.

CONTEXT:

Noel was born to a family of Kenyan immigrants in the desert town of Kuruman, South Africa, shortly after the country’s first democratic elections. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and is currently pursuing his Master of Architecture degree at Yale University. He has exhibited in South Africa and the United States, and is currently based in New Haven.

ARCHITECTURE:

The intransigent corporeality of matter
The substance of light and shadow
The realization of stricture
The modulation of space
The anonymity of material
The interaction with the body
The entanglement with time
The weight of presence
The dance with gravity
Body in relation to matter

THEMES:

Sign
Trace
Stricture
The banal
Body in space
Threshold/boundary/edge
Ambiguity
Double bind/function
Time

PAST WORKS