Soundsuit up!

When I saw pictures of the new exhibit at the Anderson Collection at Stanford I was confused. Nick Cave an artist, okay. But these colorful costumes from the man I knew who ‘really didn’t want you to know about a girl’. (Watch Wim Wenders movie Wings of Desire, if you are not sure what I’m talking about or this clip on YouTube)

Of course there are two famous Nick Cave! They even met, at least once, in New York.

SoundsuitWell this Nick Cave is a dancer, a collector and an artist. The suits are whimsical, they contain a lot of things he found in flea markets. But they also hide the person, they are true color-blind.

Nick Cave created his first soundsuit after the Rodney King beating. From twigs he collected in a park, where he tried to reflect on the beating and the riots that followed the police officers acquittal, he  made a sculpture that would strike him as a “second skin”. “I started thinking about the role of identity, being racially profiled, feeling devalued, less than, dismissed.”Cave said.  While the first one is not wearable, it striked the creator as a form of armor. He liked the sound the twigs made, so he named it Soundsuit.Two Soundsuits

There are eight Soundsuits and a video installation where people actually dance in the suits, that you can scrutinize at the Anderson until August 2017.

Just to see them is impressive.

What is your costume?