Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hollis Mickey
Designing Heritage
Prof. Ian Russell
April 25, 2010
Resonant Garments :
The Soundsuits of Nick Cave
Socks, paint, dryer lint, wood, and wool. This may seem like the most mundane list of
materials, perhaps nothing more than might be found behind the washer and dryer. Contemporary
Chicago artist Nick Cave reveals, however, that items such as these can be resonate with layered
meanings. Cave assembles diverse found objects into ‘soundsuits’ that sculpt identity and re-figure
ritual practices of the past. Cave’s soundsuits have a distinctive kind of formal slipperiness that
makes them difficult to describe. They could be sculpture, couture, instrument, or ritual costume.
Through combination of various materials and ambiguities of form, Cave’s soundsuits bring
together evocations of many times, places, and peoples to fashion dramatic transformations of the
One of Nick Cave’s soundsuits Soundsuit 1 (2006) is currently on display as part of the “The
times, negotiating around the pieces and locating their labels is even
asserts its presence. More than any other work in the exhibition, it
form, restructuring its volume both in scale and sonic expression. The title ‘soundsuit’ suggests that
the work’s exploration of the figure is at once material and aural. The material ‘suit’ quality is
obvious; the sonorous quality of the work in the silence of the gallery, must be interpreted. If this
suit was worn, it certainly would make noise: the driftwood would clang and click together with
each movement. This literal resonance is augmented by the metaphorical echoes produced by the
imaginings, recollections, and perhaps even conversations its formal and material allusions spark.
From this one object many vibrations emanate: the footsteps of obscured sacred dances, the murmur
of whispered oral traditions, the muffled screams of obfuscated violence recalled, the jubilant cries
of carnavale, and the rhythmic pulse of the house-ball dance floor. The suit truly has its own and
sound; in fact, one might say even it has its own distinctive voice. For this reason, Cave’s soundsuit
truly stands out as the most powerfully articulate work in the show. Its presence—alive in the
sonorous imaginings it creates—has an uncanny animacy characteristic of the entire series. In this
way, Cave’s soundsuits are dense and vivid sonic palimpsests of past and present that can be worn
Nick Cave’s ability to create auratic objects from simple materials stems from his
upbringing in rural Missouri in an agrarian working-class family. Interested in fashion from his
youth, he began to create his own accessories from what he could find around the house. As his
design-sense matured, he went on to the Kansas City Art Institute where he learned construction,
received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and eventually opened his own store.
Concurrent with his study of the body through fashion, he had become interested in dance, studying
soundsuit. After hearing of the Rodney King beating, he says “I started thinking about myself more
and more as a black man—as someone who was discarded, de-veiled, viewed as less than.”2 Cave
relates that while contemplating these thoughts in a local park, he noticed twigs on the earth. He
collected twigs and eventually attached them to a garment structure which he could wear. Once he
was within it, the soundsuit disguised his identity and re-figured his body; it restricted and directed
his movement. For Nick Cave, there was freedom in this restriction. His strange clothing became a
communicative articulation of a body, a self, an identity liberated from stereotype, and instead
flexible, shifting, and layered. Inspired by the potential of this initial re-figuring of the body, Cave
has created hundreds of soundsuits in different materials like beads, feathers, human hair, trash,
sequins, and raffia. The ultimate success of the work as soundsuits, rather than simply suits, relies
upon these materials. The materials which Cave chooses for his work index specific cultural and
personal meanings. The twigs for example generally connote something natural, for Cave they also
suggest isolation and disregard. Found objects, of which many of his suits are made, inherently have
imbedded, and often obscure, stories. The purchased materials like hair and sequins are evocative of
particular material relations and social systems of exchange. Cave collects all these material stories,
narratives, and meanings into a garment to be worn. Through wearing these materials are, as he
suggest, re-animated. By putting them ‘into play’ and giving them ‘voice’ through performance,
Cave creates an expressive space for a re-appropriation and re-negotiation of their meaning.
Though some suits made of sequins or dyed hair may look carnivalesque or jubilant, the
soundsuits are not simple aesthetic objects. They are designed to be inherently social and political.
Cave’s impetus is to uproot notions of fixed identity. As Cave has said, “I don’t really think of
2
Finkel, Jori. “I Dream the Clothing Electric.” NYTimes. 5 April 2009. Accessed 4 April 2010. <
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/arts/design/05fink.html>.
myself as an artist, but as a humanitarian. I’m using my work as a vehicle for change.”3 The
soundsuits function as wearable sculpture and as a kind of performative text that can be read, or
That text’s meaning is obscure or illegible to some extent. This is because the soundsuits are
dense, overlayed with murmurings of many different meanings. Soundsuit 1 has murmurings of
couture with its unusual volume and scale, Yoruban ritual through its shape, and even whisperings
of the tarred black body with the black paint that mats down the fibers. All of these suggestions
have associated sounds, and the suit approaches encapsulating their dense overlay in the soundscape
of this one garment, which, in this way, truly has volume. Other soundsuits have echoes of Klan
uniforms enmeshed with utterances of Mardi Gras Indians and clowns. Violence and jubilance
merge into one form and, potentially, into one body. Generally, the suits have both unknowable and
familiar evocations, and like the identity of the wearer, are released from fixed identity and
definition. These are not decipherable pieces. Soundsuits are meant to be sensed viscerally. As Cave
my ability to make objects come alive is…a testament to my ability to have things resonate
with their past history and usages alongside my personal through opaque meanings. I want
my work to open up vistas to many cultures (including our own), explore a wide range of
materials and formal approaches and look inwardly as it examines personal and cultural
identity in relation to the world.4
His re-designs reform the contemporary body through a collage of past contexts making it speak a
The language of Cave’s soundsuits may be foreign, but they speak effectively through their
evocations of affect. They recall emotional, sensual experience, which translates to the viewer.
When encountered, produce intense experiences that draw the viewer into a multivalent discourse.
3
Huston, Johnny Ray. “A Q&A with Nick Cave.” Pixel Vision. 9 April 2009. San Franciso Bay Guardian. Accessed 4 April
2009. < http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2009/04/09/qa-nick-cave>.
4
Cave, Nick. “Profile.” Art Institute of Chicago. 2010. Accessed 4 April 2009. <
http://www.saic.edu/gallery/saic_profile_faculty.php?type=Faculty&album=461>.
The suggestive material and particular expression in performance of the suits is suggestive of many
historical embodied traditions, like African ritual, chattelry, and festivities. Simultaneously, through
those same materials and performative uses, the suits are redolent of contemporary popular body
cultures like S&M, drag, carnavale, and hip hop. The suits speak many languages, both past and
present, currently. Through these complex articulations, Cave’s soundsuits say something, quite
audible but not always understandable, about the perpetually re-fashioning of the self, of race, of
culture through embodied practice. While each soundsuit offers a different narrative through its
materials and shape, as a corpus of work they suggest that clothing design can be used to
manipulate, alter, and change perception and embodiment of heritage. By appropriating past
practices, forms, shapes and combining them with contemporary materials, Nick Cave’s soundsuits
In recent years, Cave has recognized that this power to re-define is profoundly galvanized
through performance. He currently presents nearly all of his work through dance and performative
happenings. These performances mobilize the voice of his garments, bringing them out of the
gallery and into unexpected places. These performances add a powerful social charge of the works,
activating these embodied re-designs in spaces and places, on bodies and in relation to them.
Whether still or moving on a human body, Nick Cave’s sound suits set a specific and
expressive politic in motion through the sensual impact it makes on the viewer. As audiences stand
enraptured by these resonant garments they are pushed to confront how bodies and their display are
designed in daily life. Through the resonances of his soundsuits, Cave ultimately communicates that
we always already perform our pasts. We already wear the dense complexity of our cultural
histories externally, and are formed by them internally. We already appropriate the mundane, the
contemporary, and the unexpected for these functions. His soundsuits simply make this visible and
audible with their powerful presence.
Works Cited
Cave, Nick. “Profile.” Art Institute of Chicago. 2010. Accessed 4 April 2009.
<http://www.saic.edu/gallery/saic_profile_faculty.php?type=Faculty&album=461>.
Finkel, Jori. “I Dream the Clothing Electric.” NYTimes. 5 April 2009. Accessed 4 April 2010.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/arts/design/05fink.html>.
Huston, Johnny Ray. “A Q&A with Nick Cave.” Pixel Vision. 9 April 2009. San Franciso Bay
Guardian. Accessed 4 April 2009. < http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2009/04/09/qa-nick-
cave>.