ABOUT THE COLLABORATION

Nikolai Noel and Matt Shelton share an interest in the history of colonialism, as well as an abiding curiosity about themselves as historical creations. Both of their subject positions are in a state of crisis/flux: Shelton struggles to define himself against a backdrop of Southern white patriarchy and apartheid; and Noel strives to establish some footing in a discourse on the post/neo-colonial Caribbean, African diaspora and the heroic black narrative of 'overcoming,' attempting to clear space for the polyethnic Caribbean identity. 

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. As they are the products of different historical narratives, they are not ideal others for one another, meaning their two identities do not fall into the proper opposite slots of the binary universe that colonialism set in motion--fixed and reliable entities onto which the history of oppression can be projected. Thus, they see their respective, imperfect Otherness as a functional approximation.

The discrepancies that occur when their individual histories are combined in the conversation of historical oppression require a genuine re-engagement of a broader history of injustice in order to establish, or further destabilize, grounds for conversation and collaboration.

They began exploring this dynamic through a series of drawings addressing power--both the way it exists and the way it is perceived--and their individual subject positions. Each artist tried to occupy an essentialized version of himself--that “functional approximation”--through the drawing process. Matt amped up his whiteness and Nikolai projected a reflexive resistance, enacting the roles of the Oppressor and the Oppressed.

Through this collaboration, Shelton and Noel draw out the fallacy of the ‘cohesive subject,’ and through the performative theater of their drawings, objects and actions they enact their expectations of the oppressed or the oppressor. The work proposes binaries of race, class and nationality in order to interrupt, dissolve, and transgress them. Each artist works to undermine the progress of the other, while exploring and exposing their own prejudices and misconceptions.

Both artists seek a more authentic and chosen articulation of selfhood than the current situation of space-time has provided them. In a time in which there is no indisputable territory, they seek a neutral ground on which they can image one another, and themselves, truthfully.




Nikolai Mahesh Noel (b. 1976, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) and Matthew Pendleton Shelton (b. 1982, Danbury, NC, USA) met at Virginia Commonwealth University, where they each received and MFA in Painting and Printmaking. Noel and Shelton live in Port of Spain and Richmond, VA, respectively.