BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Celebrating Artist Nick Cave!
This week we feature a selection of Soundsuits by multi-disciplinary artist Nick Cave (1959-), and highlighted in the book 30 Americans published in 2013 in association with a traveling exhibition of the same name drawn from the Rubell Family Collection and presented nationally between 2008 and 2014. Born in Missouri, Cave studied Fiber Arts at the Kansas City Art Institute, dance at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York City, and completed his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. He now lives and works in Chicago. In a recent interview with Art Basel, Cave describes the liberating experience of creating art from a āfoundation of purpose.ā He is a āmessenger, artist, educator,ā he says. āIn that order,ā he emphasizes.
Cave built his first Soundsuit in response to the Rodney King beatings in 1992, wanting to capture the feeling of being ādiscarded, dismissed, profiled.ā He gathered twigs - also discarded, he thought - and built them into a suit of protective armor. While Cave works from a place of purpose and urgency, objects themselves often instigate the creation of a new suit: ceramic birds, buttons, toys, hair, crocheted granny squares. The immersive quality of the suit is meant to invite the audience into a āplace of dreaming,ā whether through their larger-than-life static presence in museums, or their celebratory, otherworldly dance in live performances. Cave embraces the playful, inviting, and joyful experience of the suits. āWhat,ā he wonders, ādo I need to sort of put in place to allow you to dream?ā
If youāre in D.C. this April (and if creepy billionaires havenāt ruined everything by then), go see Nick Cave and his work at the Smithsonian Craft Show. He is the 2025 Smithsonian Visionary Award Winner.
View other Black History month posts.
--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern




















