Nick Cave / United States of America

United States born 1959

Nick Cave began creating his Soundsuit series in an attempt to process his trauma associated with the 1992 Los Angeles riots. These full-body, wearable sculptures act as symbols of endurance and a form of protection by obscuring all signs of the wearer’s race, gender, age, sexual identification and class. Bearing some resemblance to African ceremonial costumes, Cave’s Soundsuits are made from everyday materials sourced largely from flea markets, including dyed human hair, plastic buttons, beads and feathers. They are joyous and spectacular, reminiscent of a marching band in procession. Cave’s Soundsuits rattle and resonate when worn in performance.

BIO

Cave currently lives and works in Chicago where he is a professor and Chair of the Fashion department at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has held solo exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum in 2013; Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston in 2014; St. Louis Art Museum in 2014–15; and Cranbrook Art Museum in 2015. His one-person exhibition Until opened at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016, travelling to Carriageworks, Sydney and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville in 2018. He received the Americans for the Arts 2014 Public Art Network Year in Review Award in 2014; the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2008; and the Artadia and Joyce Awards both in 2006, among others.