Am I the curtain? I wonder. A filter. A membrane. A veil between the private and the public. A porous filter, carer, protector for my son and family and usually lastly myself. Let the ‘right’ stuff in, keep the bad stuff out. Am I now aspiring to be fluid architecture? Ha. I want structure and softness all at once. I don’t want to be fixed, I want movement, but need to be anchored as well. How has the exhausting cycle of domesticity made a curtain the stand-in for my own desires? I realise I want to be like the curtain: poised, adaptable, useful, theatrical.

I want to embody the multiplicity of associations with curtains: containment, drama, revelation, David Lynch’s weird dream scenes, the Muppets opening sequence, elegant interiors, dappled shadows on the floor, sensuality, tactility, mystery and magic, the anticipation of hiding behind a curtain, seduction, reluctant modernist architecture that realises it needs privacy, those awkward scenes when a comedian comes on stage, accepting an Oscar for best performance as mother and artist.

Ali Noble 2023

Ali Noble’s practice is underpinned by a resistance to standardisation and homogeneity, specifically neuro-normativity and gendered expectations. Incorporating installation, sculpture, textiles and video, Noble counteracts feelings of invisibility and stagnation, deploying a material sensibility of enchantment and 'soft-contrariness’.

Offering a counterpoint to her usual interior settings, the video work in The River and the Trees (Nothing is certain, said The Curtain) relocates the stage to the public arena. The mobile curtains in the video act as personified beings, embodying an idiosyncratic sensibility–often absurd and nonsensical–where soft forms wrap around hard-edged, rigid frames. For the artist, these sculptures serve as material proxies, translating her lived experience of being in constant internal paradox: needing structure but repelling hierarchy; wanting autonomy but requiring support; feeling fixed but desiring fluidity. Considering the curtains as a skin or veil, they become a protective filter that softens the world.

With minimal prompts, the young performers respond to their environments in instinctive, playful and imaginative ways. Moving these large tactile forms across variable terrain makes visible the obstacles neurodivergent people often carry with them when traversing through the world. Noble offers a proposition: how do we each encounter the world differently and how does this inform our decision-making?

Sarah Rose, Curator Artspace 2025