Noelle Mason – X-Ray Vision vs Invisibility

For her series X-Ray Vision vs Invisibility, Mason remediated appropriated images and collected from border patrol, vigilantes, commercial security websites, and satellite images into hand-made objects to expose how new vision technologies including backscatter x-ray, thermal emission radiometer, and infrared imaging to alienate and separate the image from the human being. This separation causes the dehumanization of immigrants into objects and images, aiding current political and social views on immigration and refugees. Through Mason’s process of transforming these machine made images through the tactile, unique, and handcraft of cyanotype, weaving, and embroidery, she challenges the immediacy in which they were originally produced and consumed; she separates them from their screen,  gives them body and space, to be viewed as objects of contemplation outside of their original dehumanizing context.