Bio

Noah Fischer is a Brooklyn-based artist whose drawing, writing, and organizing have contributed to public discourse on the role cultural institutions play within capitalism and the structural debts shaping creative communities. His work has appeared in major international biennials including the Whitney Biennial, Berlin Biennale, and Venice Biennale—both with and without permission.

As a founding member of Occupy Museums, a member of Gulf Labor Coalition, a longtime collaborator with Berlin-based theater collective andcompany&Co, and more recently a co-editor of The Siren and Labor Art Review, Fischer balances collective and solo practice. He is currently engaged in New York 2044, an ongoing public art and publishing project that “reports from the imaginations” of New Yorkers to reimagine the city’s future.

Fischer is a unionized part-time Assistant Professor at Parsons School of Design and a Lecturer at NYU.

Projects & Public Commissions

  • New York 2044, Public art commission by More Art, New York. 2024-5
  • Global Swarming, Performance collaboration and set design with andcompany&Co, HAU Theater, Berlin; FFT, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2022-3
  • Occu-Pie, Performance, Aufstand der Utopien Festival, Chemnitz, Germany, 2019
  • Breakthrough Performance, 2036, American Realness Festival, Gibney Theater, New York, 2019
  • Not My Revolution If… The Stories of Angie O, Concept and set design, andcompany&Co, HAU Theater, Berlin, Germany, 2016

Selected Biennials

  • Whitney Biennial, Debtfair (Occupy Museums), Whitney Museum of American Art, 2017
  • 56th Venice Biennale, All the World’s Futures (with Gulf Labor Coalition), 2015
  • 7th Berlin Biennale, Forget Fear (Occupy Museums) 2012

Selected Exhibitions & Institutional Projects

  • Kafala: Migrant Labor in the Arabian Peninsula, Apex Art, NYC, 2022
  • Agitprop!, Brookyln Museum, 2015
  • Global Activism, ZKM Karlsruhe, 2015
  • Winter Holiday Camp, (Occupy Museums) Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (permanent collection) 2014
  • Electrical Forest, Arts Center of the Capital Region (solo) 2009
  • Monitor, Claire Oliver Gallery, 2009
  • Rhetoric Machine, Oliver Kamm Gallery 2006

Writing & Graphic Essays (Selected)

Hyperallergic

  • How Did We Get Here? (with Jesse Lambert and CM Campbell), 2025
  • Art Comes Naturally in Upstate New York, 2025
  • A Prospect Heights Ghost Story (with Financial Hardship Reporting Project), 2025
  • New York Housing Stories (series), 2024
  • That Time When I Tried to Move to Israel, 2023
  • AI: WTF Do You Know About Pain?, 2023
  • A Purgatory of Nationalisms, 2022
  • Thinking About Art on the 10th Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, 2021
  • Why the Art World Needs Populism, 2021

Other Publications

  • The Giant Pit, graphic narrative, L’Internationale Online, 2021
  • Art and the Shame Economy, in Out of Place: Artists, Pedagogy, and Purpose, Punctum Books, 2021

Editorial

  • Labor Art Review, Issue 2, Co-Editor (with Greg Sholette, Barrie Cline, Keith Christensen), 2025
  • The Siren, Co-Editor (with Coco Fusco, Pablo Helguera), Issues 1–3, 2025

Lectures, Panels & Workshops (Selected)

  • Future of New York, Conference at Pace University (co-produced with Documented), 2025
  • Columbia University School of the Arts, 60th Anniversary Alumni Panel, 2025
  • Artists Across Disciplines, Alumni Panel, Columbia University School of the Arts, 2024
  • The Institutional Collapse, Artists for Artists Masterclass Program, Workshop, 2020
  • Digital / Debt / Empire, Symposium, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 2019
  • Art Practice Beyond the Market, Graduate Lecture, SUNY New Paltz, 2018
  • Snapshots from Future Occupations, Kyiv International Biennial, 2017
  • Dark Matter Games, S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, Italy, 2017
  • Meeting Noah Fischer, Autonomia Akademia, Athens Biennale, 2016
  • The Artist as Debtor, Conference (Co-organized with Coco Fusco), Cooper Union Great Hall, 2015
  • Dark Matter Games (conference), S.a.L.E. Docks, Venice, Italy, 2015
  • Autonomia Akademia (Athens Biennial) Athens, Greece, 2015
  • Truth is Concrete, curated by Florian Malzacher, Steirischer Herbst, Graz, Austria, 2012

Teaching

  • Parsons School of Design, Assistant Professor (Part-Time, Unionized Faculty), First Year Program: Integrative Studio 2016–present
  • New York University, Lecturer (Part-Time), Department of Art and Professions, Steinhardt, Studio/Seminar Hybrid for Undergraduate Art Majors, 2019–present
  • Kenyon College, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art (full time), Classes in drawing, sculpture, digital media, senior studio, 2018-19
  • Rhode Island School of Design, Adjunct Professor, Interdisciplinary studio courses and graduate critical issues seminar in Sculpture and Liberal Arts, 2010-14

Education

  • MFA, Visual Art (New Genres), Columbia University, New York, 2004
  • Fulbright Scholar, Independent Art Research, Netherlands, 2005
  • BFA, Sculpture and Art History, Rhode Island School of Design, 1999