Anonda Bell is a New York and New Jersey based artist working in a variety of media, including drawing, painting, ceramics, printmaking and installation. Her work engages with ideas about psychology and the motivations, desires and innate qualities of the human mind. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions and solo shows in the United States and Australia. She has a Masters in Fine Arts from Monash University (Australia), a Post Graduate Diploma from University of Melbourne (Australia), Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from R.M.I.T. University (Australia) and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and English from the University of Melbourne (Australia). Bell is the Director & Chief Curator of the Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University – Newark. Bell received a 2022 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Anonda Bell’s work engages with notions of human psychology, the motivations, desires and innate qualities of the human mind. The work is interdisciplinary, referencing such things as ecology, philosophy, feminism, biology, and history. She likes to draw attention to aspects of the social, political and cultural landscape which sometimes are overlooked due to their ubiquity, or because they are deemed (by some) to be unimportant. She likes to draw attention to, and provoking curiosity in, events, people and circumstances that are for some reason taken for granted, or obscured (be it deliberate obfuscation or unintentional invisibility). Bell’s research into any subject of interest is ongoing and (as a consequence) the work grows in complexity and magnitude over time. She considers her artwork successful if it provokes questions, rather than assuming that everything has already been answered.