Nick Cave

Nick Cave (born February 4, 1959) is an American sculptor, painter, dancer, performance artist, and professor. He is best known for his Soundsuit series: wearable assemblage fabric sculptures that are bright, whimsical, and other-worldly, often made with found objects. He also trained as a dancer with Alvin Ailey and often incorporates dance and performance into his works. His later sculptures have focused on color theory and included mixed media and large-scale installations. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and directs the graduate fashion program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He continues to work on Soundsuits as well as works completed as a sculptor, dancer, and performance artist.

His first career retrospective museum exhibition was at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, May 14, 2022–Oct 02, 2022, and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, November 18, 2022 – April 10, 2023. He received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in June 2022.

Early life and education Nick Cave was raised in Fulton, Missouri, alongside six brothers by a single mother who encouraged Cave's interest in fashion. His grandparents owned a farm in Chariton, Missouri, where Cave would sometimes help care for crops and chickens. He credits a mentor art teacher at Hickman with suggesting he enroll in the Kansas City Art Institute, where he would study fiber arts and later earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1982. In 1979, Cave met Alvin Ailey and spent that summer and several summers thereafter in New York, where he studied with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. He also did some graduate coursework at the University of North Texas. Up until then, his work had nothing to do with the figure or performance art. He explained that he made a sudden shift that would redefine the work he was making. His work deals with strategies to negotiate the real-life stakes of vulnerability and consequence by transforming the experience and environment. With his performance art, he aims to create situations where diverse communities come together to share the experience, making sure to distinguish his pieces as art rather than costumes. As race, identity, and gender are generally accepted to form the axis of his work, The finished pieces bear some resemblance to African ceremonial costumes and masks. The suits also reference carnival costumes, Dogon costumes, Rococo, and ball culture. Cave collected a large number of sticks and twigs from the ground and fashioned them into a suit that, to his surprise, made sounds when worn. Bringing his interactive creations to life, "Cave regularly performs in the sculptures himself, dancing either before the public or for the camera, activating their full potential as costume, musical instrument, and living icon." He has produced more than 500 soundsuits, since the creation of his first in 1992. He is very much inspired by dance and choreography, which works well with soundsuits because they allow the expression of both arts in one piece. He talks about how he wants his work to be seen without the artist in mind. With the Soundsuits series, the viewer doesn't know the identity, gender, or race of the wearer.

In 2021, Cave was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York to create a permanent installation inspired by his soundsuits spanning the Times Square-42nd Street and 42nd Street-Bryant Park subway stations. The work, Each One, Every One, Equal All (2021), consists of a series of mosaic tile murals of imagined and real soundsuits and mobiles created by Cave, along with video installations of the soundsuits in motion. Writing about the installation in The New York Times before its completion in 2022, critic John Vincler described the figures in the work as "joyous" and said the piece "feels like a necessary correction, right at home amid the noise and teem" of the subway.

One of these Soundsuits was chosen by Peter Gabriel to represent his song "Live and Let Live", the final single on his eighth album i/o, released in 2023.

HEARD•NY – Soundsuit performance In 2013, Cave worked with the dancers of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, in which he was formerly a dancer, and created HEARD•NY. This performance took place in one of the city's most bustling thoroughfares, Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall. HEARD•NY was not a purely visual spectacle, but a layered commentary on ceremony (particularly, costumed West African ritual), identity, and the place of dreams in civic life.

A herd of 30 colorful life-size horses broke into choreographed movement—or “crossings”— twice a day for just a week and was accompanied by live music. Each suit, made of brightly-colored synthetic raffia, was operated by two dancers from the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. The project was presented by Creative Time and MTA Arts for Transit as part of a series of events celebrating the centennial of Grand Central. Cave's soundsuits were created to be seen in motion.

Choreographed performances such as these show the audience what the soundsuits look and sound like in their true form. Soundsuit sculpture is part of the Colección SOLO museum and is shown as part of its permanent exhibition and was part of different temporary exhibitions, such as Certeza (2023), at its museum in Madrid.

Mixed media Cave's works outside of his soundsuits are predominantly mixed-media sculptures and large-scale installations that use found objects and brightly colored fabrics. He creates sculptural art that discusses current racial tensions, especially gun violence and its impact on Black men. One such piece is TM 13, a sculpture that responds to the life and 2012 death of Trayvon Martin. After George Zimmerman was acquitted of Martin's murder on July 13, 2013

Cave's mixed-media sculptures often include black doll or mannequin parts (heads, hands, etc.) placed at the center or top of a piece, creating an altar-like semblance. By focusing his pieces in this manner, viewers of his art can "examine the history of trauma and racism... the objectification of the black male". His 2014 exhibition Rescue "inspects the idea of servitude and the accompanying stigma within the Black community". He has served as a visiting instructor and artist at a number of other institutions, among them Beloit College, Pilchuck Glass School, University of Arizona, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Exhibitions Cave has participated in numerous solo exhibitions and shows at galleries and museums in the United States and internationally. His solo shows include New Work (1997), Grand Arts, Kansas City, Missouri; Nick Cave: A Quarter Til Ten (2006-2007), Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth (2009-2012), originating at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Until (2016-2021), originating at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams; and Nick Cave: Truth Be Told (2020-2021), originating at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. His first museum retrospective, Nick Cave: Forothermore, opened in 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and later travelled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

He has also participated in a number of group exhibitions, including the 51st Venice Biennale (2005) and the NGV Triennial (2017-2018). and On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival at the Art Institute of Chicago (2025-2026). It is reported to be the Smithsonian's largest ever single-artist commission.

Reception Cave's work has been met with positive reception. Namesake Nick Cave, an Australian rock musician of the band Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, has spoken positively of the former's work, stating that he has "admired the work of the American artist [...] for many years", and drawing attention to its merits as "an attempt to transmute suffering into a kind of knowing and shielding joy".

Personal life Cave's husband is fellow designer Bob Faust.

Notable works in public collections

Metal Ring (c.1995), Philadelphia Museum of Art Soundsuit (2005), High Museum of Art, Atlanta Soundsuit (2008), Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand Soundsuit (2008), Brooklyn Museum, New York Soundsuit (2008), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Soundsuit (2009), Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama Soundsuit (2009), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Soundsuit (2009), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Soundsuit (2009), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Soundsuit (2010), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas Soundsuit (2010), Detroit Institute of Arts Soundsuit (2010), Minneapolis Institute of Art Soundsuit (2010), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Soundsuit (2011), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Soundsuit (2011), Museum of Modern Art, New York Soundsuit (2011), Weatherspoon Art Museum Speak Louder (2011), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Speak Louder (2011), Trapholt, Kolding, Denmark Property (2014), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri Amalgam (brown) (2015), Museum of Modern Art, New York Soundsuit (2015), National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa Soundsuit (2015), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Each One, Every One, Equal All (2021), Times Square-42nd Street and 42nd Street-Bryant Park stations, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York Amalgam (Origin) (2024), Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan