Noelle Mason: X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility

Produced with the support of Creative Pinellas and Pinellas County

January 11 – April 27, 2025

Mitchell Galleries

Noelle Mason delves into the nuanced interplay between surveillance and anonymity, control and vulnerability. Utilizing an array of non-digital media—such as cyanotype, embroidery, and tintype—Mason reinterprets images traditionally bound to technology and authority. The X Ray Vision vs. Invisibility series investigates how visual technologies shape our perception of reality, blurring the lines between observation and objectification, documentation and intrusion.

Mason’s series of widespread acclaim, X-Ray Vision vs. Invisibility, was produced with support by Creative Pinellas and Pinellas County. This body of work is about the phenomenological effects of vision technologies on the perception of undocumented immigrants. The images used in this series were made publicly available from the United States Border Patrol and other websites. This project remediates images made by machine vision technologies that are used to patrol international borders into craft processes.

This translation highlights how subtle shifts in medium can evoke a new emotional relationship to this imagery and questions the manner in which the surveillance medium itself serves to de-humanize the subjects of machine images. This shift in medium also reveals how new vision technologies recycle Cartesian modes of viewing land and body and in so doing reinforce a neocolonial worldview.