The strength and the transformative capacity of art are central to the work of Nick Cave, an American fabric sculptor, dancer, and performance artist born in 1959 in central Missouri, USA. His works are wearable sculptures made in a wide variety of materials including sequins, buttons, faux fur, toys, hair and more. Somewhere between sculpture, performance art and contemporary dance, these productions are shaped on the artist’s body and used for his performances.
They are defined Soundsuits as they produce different sounds depending on the materials they are composed of. Cave’s artistic search is based on the use of a wide variety of materials drawn from everyday life, transformed, thanks to the imaginative power of the artistic gesture, in something the artist describes as “a bizarre and psychedelic show”, featuring a huge amount of primordial energy. When exposed in a gallery, in their static sculptural, the Soundsuits appear instead immobile, surprising and wonderful, sometimes taking a disturbing and almost threatening look.
There are several cultural references: the use of the mask in the Caribbean or African culture, customs and language of the avant-garde expressionist theater, aspects of the so-called social sculpture, from Joseph Beuys to Niki de Saint Phalle, in which the artist aspired to expand the traditional definition of art towards an idea of practice, rather than work. Their carnival component also evokes traditional American celebrations like the Mardi Gras Parade in New Orleans, characterized by the use of particularly elaborate costumes, often made by local communities to display a strong sense of group identity.
The Soundsuits are a protection tool, making the gender, age, race or social class of the wearer invisible. The artist turns into an archetypal figure able to go beyond his own individuality and projects himself into another dimension, causing the viewer to reflect on the value of imagination and the recovery of a new sense of freedom.
