Nick Cave
Soundsuit 8:46, 2021
mixed media including vintage textile and sequined appliqués, metal and mannequin
Approximately: 98 x 31 x 22 in (248.2 x 78.7 x 55.9 cm)

Nick Cave
  

Chicago-based artist Nick Cave uses a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance, in work that combines exuberance and wit with searing social commentary. Perhaps the best known facet of Cave’s work are his Soundsuits: large, elaborately constructed wearable sculptures that incorporate found objects and the wearer’s body and movement. The suits’ physical exuberance camouflages identifiers such as gender and race, freeing the wearer from the weight of prejudice and expectation. Cave first conceived of the suits as a form of anonymizing protection in reaction to the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police in 1991.

The suit became a suit of armor where I hid my identity. It was something 'other.' It was an answer to all of these things I had been thinking about: What do I do to protect my spirit in spite of all that's happening around me?

Nick Cave
Soundsuit, 2013
mixed media including fabric, crochet blanket,
doilies, sequins, and mannequin
99 x 26 x 18 in (251.5 x 66 x 45.7 cm)

Nick Cave
Soundsuit, 2012
mixed media including sock monkeys,
sweaters, pipe cleaners, and mannequin
113 x 52 x 30 in (287 x 132 x 76.2 cm)

The artist draws from his background in fashion and dance for these works, constructing them around his own bodily dimensions with careful attention to the way movement will activate both the suits and the space around them. Their materials, collected from flea markets and antique stores around the country, are wholly transformed by both amalgamation and motion. Their forms are alien but often vaguely familiar, taking cues from ecclesiastical costume, African ceremonial traditions, and art historical precedents from Pop to Pattern & Decoration to performance and assemblage.

Nick Cave
Platform, 2018
mixed media installation including
a chain of bronze hands, four gramophones, heads, pillows, carved eagles
Dimensions variable

Installed in Magic Dance and 45 at 45: L.A. Louver Celebrates 45 Years with 45 Artists 

The idea of the body in space links Cave’s Soundsuits to more recent sculptural installations. His powerful multi-part sculpture Platform employs casts of the artist’s body in surreal constructions that poignantly convey a sense of protest and rage. Raised fists become gramophones as if to broadcast their message to the world. Various disembodied heads bear perched wooden eagles – a symbol inseparable from the idea of America. With their domination tipping into actual violence, these crouching predators are a reminder of inequalities that have been with this country from its beginning. Amidst all this, a screaming cast of the artist's own head lies as the base of a chain of grasping hands that rises from floor to ceiling, offering an exit route from the chaos below.

Nick Cave
Untitled, 2018
mixed media including vintage tole flowers, carved head, American flag pattern of used shotgun shells, cast bronze hand and arm, piano bench, white handkerchiefs
77 3/4 x 30 7/8 x 16 3/8 in
(197.5 x 78.4 x 41.6 cm)

The legacies of structural racism are also made explicit in an untitled work from 2018, in which a head rests on an American flag made from spent shotgun shells, a bronze arm balances on a stack of white handkerchiefs, and a single hand reaches out from the wall to offer a cascading spray of flowers. The feeling is funerial yet defiant; the floral offerings here and in the elegant Chaplet series transforming the raw power of resistance and grief into something like grace.

Nick Cave
Chaplets, 2020
cast bronze and vintage tole flowers
sizes from left to right
39 x 12 x 12 in (99 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm)
45 x 14.5 x 14 in (114.3 x 36.8 x 35.5 cm)
36 x 12 x 16 in (91.4 x 30.5 x 40.6 cm)
38 1/2 x 12 1/4 x 7 in (97.8 x 31.1 x 17.8 cm)
36 x 15 x 14 in (91.4 x 38.1 x 35.5 cm)